Peter Thiel Gave Money to Attorney General Going After Google - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-15/peter-thiel-gave-money-to-attorney-general-going-after-google <comment><USER2> Yes those who have money buy political favors in US.

[https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/07/amid-antitrust- talk...](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/07/amid-antitrust-talk-amazon- and-google-flex-lobbying-muscle/)

Google has 25 lobbying firms on retainer and spends at least $15M / year on lobbying. That is more than Verizon, Monsanto and Goldman for example, just to pick a few traditional big and scary companies off the top of my head.

Also speaking of Google, it has a pretty wide revolving door: "22 former White House officials moved into jobs at Google, while 31 Google executives took government jobs". It's not necessarily more un-evil or better than Monsanto for example, but many people still think of it as the cute little startup with fun colorful letters in the logo.

<comment><USER3> Monsanto is evil for tricking farmers or for unfair business practices, not for lobbying. This is a false equivalency. Google advocates for things that are generally in the public interest and does not abuse those position as many companies of their size do.

<comment><USER4> _> Google advocates for things that are generally in the public interest and does not abuse those position as many companies of their size do._

Yes, they do that now.

What about in the future? There's no guarantee that they won't start lobbying for things which entrench their monopoly and help their business while harming consumers.

Just look at Google Fiber. At one point in time it seemed they might actually disrupt incumbent providers like Comcast, but they figured it wasn't in their interests and mothballed it.

<comment><USER5> Source on wasn't in their interests? I've only read that they couldn't continue it due to a: aggressive regulations by incumbers preventing entry of new ISPs (such as Fiber), b: most companies (like Comcast) miraculously offered fiber once Google Fiber was in the game, and c: they're focusing on wireless/balloon solutions.

These are just what I read but I would love to hear if this was just PR and there was a sinister reason like you imply.

<comment><USER6> > I've only read that they couldn't continue it due to a: aggressive > regulations by incumbers preventing entry of new ISPs (such as Fiber)

The truth is the exact opposite. Google got very favorable treatment from fiber cities: [https://techliberation.com/2012/08/07/what-google-fiber- says...](https://techliberation.com/2012/08/07/what-google-fiber-says-about- tech-policy-fiber-rings-fit-deregulatory-hands). See also: [http://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come- seattle-...](http://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come-seattle- broadband-internet-2).

The difference between Mountain View and Kansas City isn't that that Comcast has somehow managed to out-lobby Google in Google's own back yard. That's absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While this headline is factual, this is like saying " _Man With Pre-Existing Health Conditions Donated to the Obama Campaign, and Now We Have Obamacare_ ". People shop for candidates that will serve their interests and then try to help get them elected. That is how our system of government works, and there is nothing wrong with that.

The article strives to imply that Thiel paid this guy off to bring the action, but provides no factual basis for such a conclusion. He apparently sought out a candidate that shared his point of view on Google, and donated to him. It's as simple as that. This article really is nothing more than drivel intended to further impune the reputation of a man hated by liberals for his support of Donald Trump. It's no coincidence that it appears in Bloomberg, which happens to be owned by one of the most liberal people on planet earth. I can't stand political propaganda masquerading as legitimate news - on the left or right - but that seems to be all we are exposed to these days.

<comment><USER8> > That is how our system of government works, and there is nothing wrong with > that.

The system you described naturally consolidates power, and most of society finds it acceptable only if it coexists with a mechanism to redistribute some of that power to the underprivileged class. So there are some things wrong with it.

> a man hated by liberals for his support of Donald Trump

Liberals hate him for his conservative views, not just for his support of Trump. As a PoC, it's hard not to feel disgust toward a powerful elite who says shit like: "...when you start looking for racism everywhere, and you start finding racism everywhere, it's only a very small step to finding racists everywhere. Now, there's nothing wrong if there are really racists out there, but I'm going to suggest to you that there really aren't." Textbook conservative gaslighting to downplay the prevalence of an issue that they find to be inconvenient.

<comment><USER9> > Textbook conservative gaslighting to downplay the prevalence of an issue > that they find to be inconvenient.

I think depending on your experiences, it may come off as gaslighting, but as a conservative (who loathes Trump and a lot of what Thiel champions), I can tell you that even the word racist is a heavy handed social weapon that has sometimes been used wrongly, or, and this is what triggers conservative anger, is when it's applied only to white people. So it comes off as intellectually dishonest in these types of discussions.

You may be thinking "oh Lord, cry me a river", but if everyone would cop to and own up for their own failings and work on that, things might ease a bit with regard to the tension of these discussions.

Also, you can't have diversity of experience when it's convenient, and uniformity of experience at the same time. What I mean is, if all or most PoC have experienced racism, why is it not ok to then label all PoC with the negative labels and experiences?

I've known many privileged PoC who demonstrate, if not full blown racism, then above average hostility and prejudice to not only other races, but even subgroups in their own ethnicity.

And I have known many white people who come from an underprivileged background who suffer from many of the same structural inequalities in the system because of their background and who they associate with.

I would agree with him that there really aren't many racists in the world in general, if we are defining racist as a person who consciously believes one race is superior to another.

But if we define it as people who have subconscious prejudices that influence their thinking of other cultures, ethnicities, races, etc., Then I would say that they are everywhere, including you and I.

But going with the latter definition is tricky, because humans are complex in that prejudices are overridden as often as they influence a decision. For instance, my former doctor was a somewhat older Asian lady, and she has a gigantic prejudice towards Russians and would say things like "Never adopt from Russia, the babies parents have so many drinking problems. The baby will have too many problems". However, having had her for many years, I can say that if a Russian, baby or not were to go to her for help, she would provide the same level of care she would give anyone else. Her prejudices may influence her initial thinking, but these sorts of things, if people are honest with themselves, are quickly overridden.

Again, I'm not saying there aren't racists and that there aren't institutional issues that stem from it, I'm saying that it's frustrating that it's often ignored when PoC exhibit the same behavior, and that it happens when the environment is setup to favor PoC and the white person is the one at the disadvantage.

So all that to say, I don't think it's inconvenient for conservatives or whites to have the discussion, it's just very often overly emotional on both sides and incredibly frustrating at times.

<comment><USER8> I would have been more willing to agree on a common ground before the Trump era. But now it seems as if all of the racists are seeping out of the woodwork, and I'm hearing all of the old racist arguments reinvigorated and amplified, arguments I thought had been defeated. America, for example, is the greatest empire ever to have existed, and the culture that gave rise to that is predominantly white, is it not? Is not true that African Americans are more violent and more stupid, statistically and factually speaking, than other races in America? Isn't it a fact that Jews control Hollywood? Is it not a true fact that LGBT people are more prone to mental disorders? Is it not true that ethnically homogeneous states are more stable? Why can't we talk about facts? And what is wrong, factually speaking, with any of these lines of reasoning?

If you say that there really aren't racists, then I guess I should take your word for it, despite what I experience with my own eyes and ears every day, what I'll experience tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, until I'm fucking dead.

> Again, I'm not saying there aren't racists and that there aren't > institutional issues that stem from it, I'm saying that it's frustrating > that it's often ignored when PoC exhibit the same behavior, and that it > happens when the environment is setup to favor PoC and the white person is > the one at the disadvantage.

So why not just say this instead of saying that there really aren't racists? How is saying that there really aren't racists not a form of gaslighting?

<comment><USER9> On your first point, I think those same vehemently racist beliefs have been there this whole time, only because as a white guy, those racist or just plainly prejudiced other white guys would feel more comfortable expressing those opinions around me until I would bring around a black ex-girlfriend or a Latino best friend, and the conversation on that topic would get contorted into a weird dance around the topic filled with qualified euphemisms. And this was even during the Clinton era.

But I could watch this happen at the black barbershop next door to my parents business when we would get haircuts, or the Mexican restaurant on the other side when everyone switches to purely Spanish when they would see us or the barbers walk in, but you could hear the "mayate" and "guero" get dropped into the conversation. Mind you it was the patrons of those businesses is where you would hear it from, and the proprietors of the businesses all genuinely respected and enjoyed each other.

I think what's happening now is you're seeing racists feeling empowered by an atrocious human being who used racism and economic misery to weasel himself into power, which a lot of that rage was in reaction to Obama being in office for 8 years. Obama used the same frothy rage of unhappiness and economic misery to get into the White House, much in reaction to 8 years of Bush. But I heard plenty of racist remarks in the background when Obama was elected, it just had no power, and was in fact fomented in part by the feeling of having no power.

The other aspect that I believe we're seeing is amplification. The Internet and social media have so much more power than they did in 2008, both in it's influence, and our perception of that influence. But in reality, it's the same human dirt that has been there forever, with water added, and flung father than ever before.

However, the quote you posted in your original comment is subtly different than what you've said in your response to mine. The way you understood the quote, I'm assuming, is that he was saying there aren't any racists. The way I read your original quotation was that he was saying that there aren't racists _everywhere_. We can split hairs on that one, and English definitely doesn't provide any help, but I certainly don't want to dig in even a millimeter defending Trump's or Thiel's intent.

I'll get into that in the next block, but I've seen activists on both sides create mountains out of molehills with regard to parsing the intent of a poorly phrased statement.

> So why not just say this instead of saying that there really aren't racists? > How is saying that there really aren't racists not a form of gaslighting?

I guess I would say it would depend on the intended audience. If they were trying to convince PoC that there are no white racists at all, then I would definitely consider it gaslighting. But if they're saying no one of any ethnicity is a racist, I would tend to treat that as a political (and more "positive") spin of what Trump said about Charlottesville.

If their audience are whites, then I would say it's appealing to their base, who, while all prejudiced, the majority of which are not racist, but who are often spoken about as if they were, or should be ashamed for being a part of racism.

And there is the possibility it's both, which is the dark side of effective use of political speak. You can encourage "us" and try to discourage "them", while holding onto deniability about intent.

But personally, without having read or heard Thiel's exact statements in the interview you quoted, I don't want to guess at the intent of those specific comments.

And I think that Trump (and culturally, his entire regime) is a natural genius about using language to incite both sides to action or reaction, and yet he can play all sides to his advantage.

There are reams of ways to use language to not only avoid responsibility, but associate ideological contrary statements so that your average political base may feel compelled to endorse it even if they add qualifications and disclaimers around it (which are all ignored by the opposing side).

Kinda like my entire set of comments, I guess, though I am completely opposed to them, I think nuance on both sides is needed, moreso during these times :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's plenty of behavior from Google that smacks of anti-trust. From not showing competitors products in search results (protonmail was the most prominent recent case) to locking out customers heavily reliant on Google, they've gotten rather "evil"

Having said that, I have zero confidence in politicians to make this right. If Google is evil, politicians are the spawns of Satan. Republicans probably have a bone to pick with Google given how left leaning googlers are. So this immediately transforms a anti trust issue into Democrats vs Republicans

<comment><USER11> Republicans support big business, though, right?

(Having large successful businesses in blue states provides a well if funds they can transfer to the red states... As we see them doing with the current tax proposals.)

<comment><USER12> A comment in another thread made an interesting point about this press release done by the Missouri AG. Generally AGs don't need to send out press releases to announce the _beginning_ of an investigation if they already have evidence that will stick.

Google will probably end up hiring an expensive local law firm in Missouri and spend money on marketing to Missourians to improve its image. Without the AG's threat of a lawsuit, Google expenditures would probably largely avoid Missouri.

If this is true, the AG is playing at something that kinda smells like a legal form of racketeering, unless there is actually strong grounds to bring a anti- trust case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Okay. That's not illegal and there's no evidence of bribery. My congressman also fought for net neutrality and I also gave him money. In fact, I gave him money _because_ I wanted him to fight for net neutrality for me.

<comment><USER14> You gave your congressman as significant an amount of money as theil did?!

<comment><USER15> Isn't $300k like $500 to Peter Thiel?

<comment><USER16> Would that make it equivalent in the eyes of the recipient?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Clearly Thiel is not important enough and has to use the old school way of lobbying - by sending massive amounts of cash through shady lobbying groups.

If he was more important, he could simply call the president like Zuck: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/13/mark-z...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/13/mark- zuckerberg-obama-nsa-facebook-message)

<comment><USER18> A rant tangential to original submission but, articles like you linked always push me to the edge. A supposedly tech journalist throwing around redundant requests.

> a) Facebook Pro doesn't track me;

> b) Facebook Pro stores zero data about me; and

> c) Facebook Pro uses encryption in every possible way.

b makes a redundant, and c is already there. Also the personalization is the product itself, so storing "zero data" also breaks the product.

Want to see an unpersonalized timeline looks like? Go check twitter. From the beginning, the timeline view (or whatever it is called) was unusable and most of all: _irrelevant_.

People want to be on the Facebook because everybody is there, but for some reason people also want to get rid of core feature how it keeps all its users on board and active. Just don't use it if you are that bothered. (I don't)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are we supposed to assume that by Thiel giving $300k to Hawley's political campaign in 2015, Thiel is behind Hawley's antitrust investigation into Google? Enough with the "click bate" titles and attenuated conclusions. Another article from a major news outlet that contains zero facts supporting its implied premise.

<comment><USER20> That would be a sound assumption.

Why else should a Silicon Valley billionaire give 300k to someone running for attorney general in a Missouri? Is he just interested in justice being pursued in a small Midwestern state he doesn't live in, that he is neither from, nor studied in, nor has his major business interests in?

$300,000 is a sizable donation for someone running for attorney general in a low key state.

<comment><USER21> > $300,000 is a sizable donation

According to Forbes' estimates, Thiel is worth about $2.8 billion. Donating $300,000 for him is proportional to giving maybe $30 for a normal upper-middle class person.

<comment><USER20> The important question is what $300,000 is to the attorney general. For 99 percent of us it's more than we could hope to save up in many years.

<comment><USER21> > For 99 percent of us it's more than we could hope to save up in many years.

This is true. It's also true that it's an utterly trivial amount of money to somebody like Peter Thiel.

<comment><USER22> trueness != relevance

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > unveiled a probe into Alphabet Inc.'s Google for favoring its own products > in search results

Is there something inherently wrong with that? I understand it's annoying, but Google is a business after all, not a charity.

Not showing competing results could be considered evil, but merely favoring their own products seems fair to me.

Then again every product I've been building never took off, so what do I know?

</comment><comment><USER24> This headline has not been phrased with honesty nor dignity.

Donated to a Campaign vs Gave Money to a person.

Donated to a campaign in Jan. Google suite filed mid November.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice to see billionaires doing good with their money.

<comment><USER26> Bro managed to remove Gawker from the internet. It's already a better place.

Strange how people are demanding Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al "clean up their content" but when someone does it with a lawsuit, all a sudden these toxin spewing organizations are supposed to be the "underdogs"?

What's that? Oh, the world's smallest tear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Soros is way scarier the way he is buying up district attorneys.

[http://freebeacon.com/politics/george-soros-continues- quietl...](http://freebeacon.com/politics/george-soros-continues-quietly-pile- wins-district-attorney-races/)

</comment><comment><USER28> It's only fair. Google goes after conservatives, conservatives go after Google. Don't want your fortunes to depend on politics? Easy solution: stay out of politics. Be neutral and above the fray, declare political discourse (all of it, not just conservative points of view) socially unacceptable at work.

<comment><USER29> Is there any real evidence of Google going after conservatives?

Is it not just a result of the fact that younger and better educated people are less likely to be conservative that gives this impression?

<comment><USER28> Google is very "Chinese Revolution" on the inside. You can totally have negative career and social consequences for being public at work about your conservative viewpoints and voting preferences. At the same time you can have positive consequences for signaling virtue to liberals. You could say "that's not Google" doing this, but the thing is, Google totally supports, condones, and encourages this behavior.

But those are internal affairs, so you might argue this is irrelevant. But recently this attitude slipped outside with YouTube demonetization of conservative commentators, forced de-trending of popular conservative videos and forced trending of liberal ones?

If you want to play this ball, expect defense to get involved.

<comment><USER29> I understand the general concept of what Google might do if it was actually doing this, I was looking for some kind of evidence that it was actually happening in reality.

I watch a vlog about EVs on Youtube, and the host of that complains about being demonitized by some new algorithm. I'm fairly sure he's not a fascist that's been put on some list by the Googlestapo, so it seems likely that other people may just be jumping to conclusions.

<comment><USER28> You "understand" everything, it seems. You just choose not to see it.

<comment><USER30> Amazing lack of evidence being provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> America! Give $1000 to a Congressman and you buy what money in the real world cannot.

In other countries corruption is more honest: want the license to build a building? It will cost you an apartment or $XX,XXX. Personally, I prefer the later...</comment>


Opinions and counter-measures in an extreme situation: Security these days - <AUTHOR> http://karl-voit.at/2014/12/30/security-and-extreme-opinions/

<comment><USER2> A really interesting paper on the "Nothing to hide" argument is "'I've got nothing to hide' and other Misunderstandings of Privacy", which you can read for free online.[1]

I would really recommend spending the 30 minutes and reading it in full, it is really nice.

[1] [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565&](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565&)</comment>


Pittsburgh has finally realized it's in a toxic relationship with Uber - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/904744/pittsburgh-officials-are-criticizing-ubers-one-way-relationship-with-the-city/ <comment><USER2> So, the city is asking a company to pay extra money in addition to the normal taxes, and if they decline, that's called "a toxic relationship" ?

The main purpose of a municipality is to provide infrastructure that's convenient for people and businesses in it, in that context the things Uber asked (according to the article) seem reasonable - it's also reasonable to not provide what a single company asks because/if there are other priorities, but it certainly is reasonable to ask them.

Not offering to fund it yourself isn't a sign of an one-sided relationship - the company is providing direct taxes through sales and indirect taxes through jobs, and it's reasonable to expect proper infrastructure in return.

<comment><USER3> Uber has also gotten political cover, which is usually what you need to pay extra for. They don't have it in Seattle and are ending up fighting a local ordinance letting their regular drivers vote on whether all Uber drivers need to be union members in court.

If you're as big as Uber, paying your taxes is not enough, you need to show that you are a positive contributor to society so that society decides it shouldn't regulate you out of existence.

<comment><USER4> _If you 're as big as Uber, paying your taxes is not enough, you need to show that you are a positive contributor to society so that society decides it shouldn't regulate you out of existence._

what theory of economics is this i'm not familiar.

if you are a big company that means customers show every day with their wallets that they value the company unless some govt regulation is restricting competition.

<comment><USER5> Too bad customers aren't always voters. Voters are the ones who count.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >After bending over backward to accommodate the ride-sharing company's driverless car ambitions, city officials are tired of being taken for granted.

>Pittsburgh wrote a letter in support of Uber when the company was fined $11.4 million for operating in Pennsylvania without permission.

>Pittsburgh opened its streets to tests of self-driving cars with real people, and played along with Uber's hasty and elaborate press event.

>Peduto asked Uber to spend $25 million on a new transit connection

So the local govt "bending over backward" is that they "wrote a letter" and allowed use of streets. In return they wanted a $25M project. Ok.

>On Feb. 4, protestors marched on the Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh's Strip District, decrying the company's "one-way" partnership with workers.

Ah, I think this is the heart of the matter. Mayor Peduto wants to seem supportive of the protesters.</comment>


Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray into Internet Censorship  - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1319466

<comment><AUTHOR> Link points to the Abstract. The paper can be downloaded from the site or [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1319466_code...](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1319466_code865180.pdf?abstractid=1319466&mirid=1) (pdf, 416Kb)</comment>


If cramming is illegal, why don't people go to jail for it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/176355/how-come-no-one-goes-jail-cramming

<comment><USER2> "Cramming is stealing. It's no different than you or me hacking into someone's bank account and transferring money to our own accounts. It's no different than stealing someone's credit card and going on a shopping spree. It's no different than picking someone's pocket and taking their money."

Yeah. Maybe. There is a difference. When you hack someone's bank account or credit card, you aren't giving anyone a choice; the money's gone without any action on the victim's part. In cramming, the fraudsters don't get any money until you voluntarily pay them. And you could dispute the charges.

Not defending cramming, the perpetrators should be charged, although something more fraud related rather than direct theft related might be more appropriate.

But there is a difference.</comment>


Why Labor Unions And Silicon Valley Aren't Friends, In 2 Charts - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/29/why-labor-unions-and-silicon-valley-arent-friends-in-2-charts/ <comment><USER3> Oh this is moronic.

Trades unions did not come into existence to protect the jobs of middle income workers just to spite the selfless and innovative capitalists.

The move out of the fields and into towns was unbelievably painful for the families and workers living through it. Starvation was common throughout nineteenth century Britain, workhouses a reality for swathes of the population. And then they were exploited by the privileged - <USER2> sometimes, almost always working in dangerous conditions.

Unionisation gave them a voice and a place at the table - it took long years, with real violence, death and sacrifice as the cost.

I am just fucking outraged that this is now dismissed as fat union leaders taking their lazy time to protect disrupted jobs. It's a meme I see here in the UK too and each time I fail to hear how amazingly innovative the bosses are, because most could not manage their way out of a paper bag.

And there is one more reason I think that the history of unions is important - they came out of a period when almost all the workers moved out of the fields and into the factories - and we are on the cusp of a time when all the workers will move out of the offices, and into cyberspace.

I am a middle aged, middle class, educated, skilled worker in the fifth largest economy in the world. Trying to exploit me is like trying to take advantage of a Hippo with a headache.

That is not true of all of the other seven billion people who will benefit from a trip to cyberspace. Some will lack education, healthcare, security, credit, law and plain good luck.

They will need unions. Those unions will not look like the current damaged crop. But they will be needed - history tells us that much. Now disrupt in that direction and I will be there to help.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to see what a 21st century union looks like. It seems like you could cut down on a lot of the overhead and bureaucracy that is associated with unions via relatively new technologies such as the Internet.

<comment><USER3> It _might_ look like a subscription forum for workers in a specific industry, providing legal services and a blacklist of companies who have verifiably screwed over a member.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to note though that the concept of a universal livable wage is a solution that some technologists would advocate. Many of us realize that it's simply a matter of time before tech replaces a significant percent of human workers (as it did horse workers at the end of the 19th century). Once that happens trouble will brew and the sooner we figure out how to solve it efficiently and effectively, the smoother the transition will be for society.</comment>


Elon Musk Speaks About Tesla and SpaceX at Vanity Fair's Summit [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPsHN1KyRQ8#t=1879

<comment><USER2> I'm curious about his electric vertical take off and landing supersonic airplane idea. He has mentioned it in several interviews so far.

I wonder how he plans to position the electric motors and the fans. Vertical take off needs a huge amount of power compared to normal runway take off, that means bigger batteries...

He surely has based the concept in first principles, but I must be missing something about this one.

<comment><USER3> Just speculating.. do you have to take the launch batteries with you?

<comment><USER4> That's what I was thinking. In my head I was seeing something still connected and that once it's actually airborne the craft jettisons the power cables.

Or maybe there's a way to fundamentally re-think how we're designing airports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting hack. The video is interesting starting from the beginning, but the URL as submitted adds t=1849 which is the discussion about bitcoin.

<comment><USER6> More of a feature that a hack. If you click the share button there is a "start at" input.

<comment><USER5> My thought on the hack was submitting a BitCoin post to HN with the title Elon talks about Tesla and SpaceX :-)

My guess was that they paused after watching the part about SpaceX and Tesla, opened up share, cut and pasted the URL, not realizing that the video would start _after_ the discussion and instead just be the part about Bitcoin and Paypal. Perhaps I am to easily amused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> he doesn't seem to care about bitcoin. that's okay with me...

</comment><comment><USER8> Was not expecting that low blow on bitcoin.</comment>


A New Weapon in Russia's Arsenal, and It's Inflatable - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/world/europe/russia-decoy-weapon.html <comment><USER2> See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fortitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fortitude)</comment>


VC confidence plummets, does anyone care? - <AUTHOR> http://iamelgringo.blogspot.com/2008/04/if-startup-doesnt-need-vc-and-vc.html <comment><USER2> does anyone care? hell yes.

\- there are entire classes of problems that require VC funding due to their complexity. Sure, some don't, but many do. Google is a great example. In their case, they required capital to quickly expand their team and for capital equipment.

\- when VC confidence plummets, then angel investor confidence also plummets -- perhaps more so because angel investors are investing out of their own pockets. does anyone care if angel investor confidence plummets? hell yes.

I read someplace about the percentage of YC companies that secured funding after graduating. I can't find the reference, but the percentage was fairly high. If nobody cared, then that percentage would have been close to zero.

This is even something PG appears to care about: <http://www.paulgraham.com/googles.html>

BTW, if you're talking $1MM in company revenue per year, better divide that in-half-ish as the amount that ends up in your bank account every year (assuming you live in the USA). There are taxes to pay, after all, and many other fees. So now you're looking at 9 - 10 years. Oddly enough, DHH really didn't make note of that in his presentation, which just goes to show you how he over-simplified everything.

But then again, if $1MM a year is so easy, then how hard could $2MM per year be, right? After all, he didn't mention an upper-limit on the amount of revenue his 3-step plan could generate.

I'm not trying to convince you that you shouldn't move forward with your DHH- slide-presentation-inspired company. You absolutely should! But I've been there myself a couple of times and there's a good chance that one day, before profitability, you'll need money. And you've already borrowed everything you can from your friends and family. And you're broke and the people who work for you aren't getting paid. And if you ever reach that point (and I sincerely hope you don't), you might care too.

<comment><USER3> After reading your comment, I went back and read the original article again. I believe you have made some very good points and no one can really argue against them except I believe the main point of the article was much simpler than that, which is what the author calls "dynastic", as in dynastic company, dynastic exit and therefore dynastic funding (from VC).

My own experience with starting and running startups is that time has changed. I am not saying that time has changed completely such that the old model (get VC money to do R&D) does not exist, I am just (humbly) saying that a new model has emerged that allows entrepreneur to "bootstrap" a meaningful company with sustainable and meaningful revenues. And when time comes to scale the company, one can always go out for more money. That path has not gone away just because you bootstrap, except now you are treating VC money as working capital (not R&D grant).

It really comes down to impedance matching which I think is the important point of the original article. Should we match the impedance for the VC which means big exit, big company and big funding? Or should we try to match the impedance for the entrepreneurs which calls for modest exit, modest company and modest funding?

I am a successful example of the latter which is what I call "getting a medium slice of a medium pie". My last company is completely bootstrapped. Six founders worked three years with no salaries. They then took a modest amount of angel money to launch the product and buy inventory. Now the company is very successful. Late-stage VC's are kicking the door down to want to buy a piece of the action. And I took an early retirement to write a book. It can work.

<http://www.StartupForLess.org>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A well-written article. I enjoyed it.

I think the message has been out there for sometimes but it took a group of credible messengers (especially DHH) and a visible forum (Startup School) to drive the point home.

The following is my own experience on how VC's can be an entrepreneur's worst enemy. I have posted it a number of times in this forum already and I apologize in advance if I have over-done it. Thanks.

<http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/vc-worst-enemy.html></comment>


Adobe takes aim at Microsoft and Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/adobe_officedocs

<comment><USER2> Sure Adobe can make products that work better and look better than Microsoft's current office suites, but arguably Linux has a better operating system, Firefox has a better browser, and that has not caused people to stop using Windows or IE respectively. Microsoft is just too well rooted in the corporate world.</comment>


Six Signs of Scientism (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.uta.edu/philosophy/faculty/burgess-jackson/Haack,%20Six%20Signs%20of%20Scientism.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm a practicing biomedical researcher.

When people in my daily life do the "X ... for SCIENCE!" thing, or i see "science: it works, bitches" bumper stickers, or the like, I'm always a little sad.

I try to remind myself that the map isn't the terrain, and that humans are guaranteed to build little cargo cults just to form a hermeneutic and handle the world, but it's still disappointing to see the form of a thing being, frankly, worshipped, instead of the thing itself being used productively. The scientific process is (to abuse a phrase a little more) a wonderful servant , but a terrible master.

Hell, even Indiana Jones comes up sometimes: "Archaeology is the search for fact, not Truth. If it's Truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall."

I know that scientific fields are not even close to being alone in this, it's just a sobering reminder to keep myself on my toes. Feynman's point in "Cargo Cult Science" (1974)[0] remains very true: it is really super hard to avoid bullshitting yourself, even if you're aware that that's a thing that can happen and you try to prevent it.

[0]: [http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf)

<comment><USER3> >> "Archaeology is the search for fact, not Truth."

I've always hated that quote. If it were true, archaeology papers would be nothing more than photographs of things people found. As soon as the archaeologist points to something and says "tool" or "weapon", then opinion, interpretation and "truth" are part of the equation.

So much of archaeology has been thrown away as junk science. The artifacts on which that science was based have not been tossed, we have just reinterpret them. We no longer interpret dinosaur bones as evidence of mythical dragons any more than we see the Grand Canyon as evidence of Noah's flood.

<comment><USER4> To play the devil, how is history scientific? I mean as far as we know theres only one history. And parts of it are not known to us. But in absence of recorded accounts (and even in the face of them), aren't we _bound_ to interpretation? Science measures the tangible. History isn't.

<comment><USER2> I've watched Rashomon and you won't fool me: there's n! histories where n is ~ population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I recommend reading the entire paper, but here are the aforementioned six:

1\. Using the words "science," "scientific," "scientifically," "scientist," etc., honorifically, as generic terms of epistemic praise.

2\. Adopting the manners, the trappings, the technical terminology, etc., of the sciences, irrespective of their real usefulness.

3\. A preoccupation with demarcation, i.e., with drawing a sharp line between genuine science, the real thing, and "pseudo-scientific" imposters.

4\. A corresponding preoccupation with identifying the "scientific method," presumed to explain how the sciences have been so successful.

5\. Looking to the sciences for answers to questions beyond their scope.

6\. Denying or denigrating the legitimacy or the worth of other kinds of inquiry besides the scientific, or the value of human activities other than inquiry, such as poetry or art.

<comment><USER5> I especially like that you included #6 because one big "value" I would say amongst the scientism "community" would be the overt trashing of art and poetry as meaningless. It's very sad.

<comment><USER2> "If It'S nOt ScIeNcE iT's A lIE" is an exceptionally common trope, especially among the people in my social strata. I'm not entirely sure that people espousing that belief set are even doing so explicitly, i think it's so implicit as to have become an unconsidered axiom.

I (see upthread), a scientist myself, think it's absolute hogwash, and i'm certainly not abnormal among my peers in that.

There's something about being the person who not only watches how the sausage is made but has spent (ack) 14 years at this point making sausages of several kinds that kind of strips away overly idealistic expectations about How Pure And Right This Thing Must Be. If you're lucky, and i think i am, you learn enough humility to acknowledge the value of other people's sausage-makings. And, often, have the right state of mind to see and acknowledge the intellectual power and meaningful contributions of people well outside my field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Science is our best tool for understanding the material world, but it is unsuited for solving problems beyond that scope. Science cannot tell us what to live for, or what is good or evil. It can definitely inform the answers to those questions, but so much sloppy thought emerges from those who reduce problems of philosophy to problems of science.

<comment><USER4> This was generally my entire college experience. There were a few pockets of fresh air, like my philosophy classes. It was only after graduating that I started to notice people slowly coming around to the idea science is a useful, but not exhaustive tool, for developing ethical frameworks, world views, principles, etc. And the attempts to use it strictly to do so (the pockets of hyper-rational logic out there) leave much to be desired, at least in my opinion. What surprised me most was how often practitioners of science, not just those "for science yarr" types, got caught up in the whole thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Edward Feser has written a bunch on this topic over the years:

> _Despite its adherents' pose of rationality, scientism has a serious > problem: it is either self-refuting or trivial. Take the first horn of this > dilemma. The claim that scientism is true is not itself a scientific claim, > not something that can be established using scientific methods. Indeed, that > science is even_ a _rational form of inquiry (let alone_ the only _rational > form of inquiry) is not something that can be established scientifically. > For scientific inquiry itself rests on a number of philosophical > assumptions: that there is an objective world external to the minds of > scientists; that this world is governed by causal regularities; that the > human intellect can uncover and accurately describe these regularities; and > so forth. Since science_ presupposes _these things, it cannot attempt to_ > justify _them without arguing in a circle._

* [https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/03/1174/](https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/03/1174/)

* [http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/03/scientism-roundup.ht...](http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/03/scientism-roundup.html)

* [http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/07/fallacies-physicists...](http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/07/fallacies-physicists-fall-for.html)

See also naturalism:

> _According to Robert Priddy, all scientific study inescapably builds on at > least some essential assumptions that are untested by scientific > processes;[15] that is, that scientists must start with some assumptions as > to the ultimate analysis of the facts with which it deals. These assumptions > would then be justified partly by their adherence to the types of occurrence > of which we are directly conscious, and partly by their success in > representing the observed facts with a certain generality, devoid of ad hoc > suppositions. "[16]_

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_\(philosophy\))

<comment><USER8> Feser is actually wrong on a handful of points.

Science-qua-epistemic-method does _not_ require "that this world is governed by causal regularities." In such a case, the method would still work, it would just figure out that all claims of causal regularity were false. Comprehensibility likewise shows his theistic bias: whether or not we can understand the rules of the universe are irrelevant to whether or not we can use science to reject our _incorrect /limited_ interpretations.

What science _does_ require is that the scientist _not be actively deceived,_ (e.g. if our senses were telling us there is a world external to our mind but there wasn't, that would be a form of deception that would defeat science.)

<comment><USER9> How would you distinguish using science-qua-epistemic-method between a world where all claims of causal regularity were false and a world in which scientist were actively deceived?

<comment><USER8> The problem with the "actively deceived" scenario is that it defeats science, so demanding that we use science to determine whether or not scientists are actively deceived would mean that we have not quite understood the point.

<comment><USER9> Right - do you draw the distinction between the cases you propose philosophically then? I'm on board with an _a priori_ commitment to the idea that we are not actively deceived in our observations of nature, but I think without the same _a priori_ commitment to the idea of causal regularity in nature we'd have the same problem.

I suppose I don't see how "actively deceived" defeats science, but "universe not governed by causal regularities" doesn't? In both cases, we seem to be able to identify patterns and regularities in nature that are illusory.

<comment><USER8> Because as I said, we would do science and end up rejecting all claims requiring causal regularities. That we might observe something that seems like a causal regularity is irrelevant, because it wouldn't be repeatable, so we'd end up rejecting it. If you want to invent some case where "well, what if scientists measuring something makes it seem regular?" then you've created a causal regularity where we're not supposed to have any (i.e. scientists measuring causing regular behavior)

I'm also going to take issue with Feser using the concept of causation in the first place. While physicists certainly still use the language of cause and effect, I don't think they need the concept _metaphysically_ in the way theists do.

Its like how biologists might say something like "this species of butterfly evolved a longer proboscis in order to drink from this kind of flower" but metaphysically they would understand that the butterfly species never actually had the _intent_ to make their noses longer (neither did evolution, nor mother nature.) So biologists might use teleological terms as a useful shorthand, while understanding that there is no actual teleology metaphysically speaking.

I think physics is in the same place with respect to causality. They may speak that way, but at the end of the day they just need the data to fit their models. So we could have _acausal_ regularities, and science would work completely fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Its heartening to me to see this here, and to see people understanding that science and scientism are not the same thing. Scientism is actually anti- scientific. Science is a practice and a process, not a cult idol or a dogma.

I think a lot of people have promoted scientism in an attempt to fight low superstition and other obvious bullshit, but I think that's a devil's bargain. You may get some superficial acceptance of "science" that looks like progress, but you are not actually teaching rational thought. You are just getting people to misuse science by placing in the same role as any other superstitious idol.

I also think it in part is responsible for the huge resurgence of "scientific" racism. That stuff looks like science and sometimes even is, albeit of a cherry picked and spun nature and interpreted in a way that is devoid of deeper philosophical consideration. To really refute it requires both a deep study of the real science and of topics like ethics, morality, history, epistemology, and language. It's hard for that kind of discourse to compete with a few graphs and color coded maps and memes that all say "science."

You also have things like "Plandemic" that I am personally seeing catch on among some who have a cargo cultish belief in "science" but no understanding of what it actually is nor desire to really learn. Those videos and memes also toot the dog whistles and pay homage to the shibboleths of scientism, but they are maybe even further from actual science than race/IQ dogma.

Cultish idolatry of any form biases the audience toward short simple catchy messages that pay homage to the idol and toot the right dog whistles. Longer form discourse loses, especially if it even tiptoes anywhere near questioning the idol or the cult. Even if an idolatrous cult starts from ideas and premises that are somewhat rational it will drift into lunacy over time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Science and scientism tend to go hand in hand.

Science has saved us from the plagues of gross superstition. Did many of those have kernels of truth? Well, sure. But how do we analyze them as to why? More superstition doesn't cut it. One needs a set of thought tools that can systematically tear it apart carefully. And physical tools facilitate that. And then add in measuring and reproducibility, and there's science.

But taken too far, and #5 of their list is violated. Not everything can be analyzed. And some things, I would dare say, shouldn't be analyzed.

Although, with the more we see IoT, internet tied hardware, machine learning, neural nets, and the like, the more our gross matter doesn't appear to follow science. Why does the IoT thing do X? Well an update last night no longer does that. Or, why does Google searches act completely different between 2 people? Once matter was programmable and reprogrammable, it becomes much more difficult to perform science on them.

<comment><USER12> One might as well complain that when that one kilogram pile of protons, neutrons and electrons flaps and squawks like a chicken, it no longer "follows science". It's just that biology is a better, higher level tool for getting meaningful than particle physics for explaining the trajectory of a chicken.

And it's a well-known aphorism that "in carefully controlled conditions ... the experimental animal will do as it damn well pleases". And yes; it becomes more difficult to reason about the trajectory of that chicken when its internal motivations and factors like hunger, tiredness etc. are opaque to us. And I think that's directly analogous -- DNA and the processes of life have programmed and reprogrammed matter, and does make reasoning about them harder.

And it highlights the importance of metaphorically aseptic technique in the analysis of malware and computer interaction; and in doing so highlights the problems of "laboratory conditions" being distinct from real world ones since malware might detect the abnormal sterility...

(I'm not even sure whether I'm agreeing with you or disagreeing. But your post was thoughtprovoking.)

<comment><USER11> And that I think is that what we're discussing is the crossroads of science, metrology, philosophy, logic, and mathematics.

What is a kilogram? Is the idea the same as the base object? Should it have a physical representation at all? What happens when the kilogram changes? Can it change? What does it mean when/if it does? If we change it, are we still conducting science?

Of course, that sphere of metal is easy to pick on. But what about the "constant" of C, which we've seen other science studies showing it itself changes - which possibly indicates Planck's constant changes. But the solution was to state by fiat that C is an exact speed and move on. To me, this smacks as unscientific as Indiana defining pi as 3.

And as the meme goes, psychology > biology > chemistry > physics > mathematics. And yet each layer has its own findings and studies, but rarely do each group talk to each other. And such studies come into conflict.... But they're both right. What do we do then? More science? Less?

And there's falsified science. We don't talk much about that. It doesnt win studies. It doesn't get grants. Nor do failed studies get acolades and tenure positions. They should, but they don't. Knowing what areas don't have connection is just as important as those that do. It represents a map of understanding positive and negative.

And I don't think this is one of those agree/disagree.. at least I never took it that way. This is just one of those topics that goes to the root of our world. And we each are just a piece of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Going to break a little bit of a lance in defence of 'scienticism' in a mild sense given that a lot of the comments overwhelmingly agree with the piece.

I think there's a lot of benefit to science as a methodology or process even in contexts where science might not seem readily applicable. The author takes as an example issues of justice. While it's true that there's something fallacious about trying to reason about oughts from scientific principles there is I think a lot of value in grounding these discussions in the scientific process. The reason for that is that scientific principles force people to avoid 'language games' or rationalisations and provide a common formalism to make 'progress'.

People often use 'scientism' as a pejorative for a sort of cold, broken calculator like mentality, but a scientific account of justice, grounded in biology, evidence about punishment and so forth would almost certainly be more humanistic, forgiving, and productive than say, religious debate or ad hoc moral justification, which has led to some of the more cruel treatments in our history.

The author also I think makes some basic mistakes about the nature of science, she says for example:

 _" But too often those elegant mathematical models turn out to be based on assumptions about "rational economic man" true of no real-world economic actors."_

This is true, but not really a problem. As Milton Friedman put it: _" Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have "assumptions" that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions (in this sense) Why? Because such hypotheses and descriptions extract only those crucial elements sufficient to yield relatively precise, valid predictions, omitting a welter of predictively irrelevant details. Of course, descriptive unrealism by itself does not ensure a "significant theory"_

Believing in the 'rational man' is no mistake of scientism but like believing in a perfect sphere. Somewhat absurd and evidently not found in the real world but nonetheless useful as a tool to form theories.

<comment><USER14> > Going to break a little bit of a lance in defence of 'scienticism' in a mild > sense given that a lot of the comments here overwhelmingly agree with the > piece.

> I think there's a lot of benefit to science as a methodology or process even > in contexts where science might not seem readily applicable. The author > takes as an example issues of justice. While it's true that there's > something fallacious about trying to reason about oughts from scientific > principles there is I think a lot of value in grounding these discussions in > scientific process. The reason for that is that scientific principles force > people to avoid 'language games' or rationalisations and provide a common > formalism to make 'progress'.

> People often use 'scientism' as a prejorative for a sort of cold, broken > calculator like mentality, but a scientific account of justice, grounded in > biology, evidence about punishment and so forth would almost certainly be > more humanistic, forgiving, and productive than say, religious debate or ad > hoc moral justification, which has led to some of the more cruel treatments > in our history.

> The author also I think makes some basic mistakes about the nature of > science, she says for example:

> "But too often those elegant mathematical models turn out to be based on > assumptions about "rational economic man" true of no real-world economic > actors."

> This is true, but not really a problem. As Milton Friedman put it: "Truly > important and significant hypotheses will be found to have "assumptions" > that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in > general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the > assumptions (in this sense) Why? Because such hypotheses and descriptions > extract only those crucial elements sufficient to yield relatively precise, > valid predictions, omitting a welter of predictively irrelevant details. Of > course descriptive unrealism by itself does not ensure a "significant > theory"

> Believing in the 'rational man' is no mistake of scientism but like > believing in a perfect sphere. Somewhat absurd and evidently not found in > the real world but nonetheless useful as a tool to form theories.

A lot of what you have stated appears to rest on the assumption that the other disciplines have no methodology, as well as inserting false dilemma.

<comment><USER13> I think it's fair to say that what distinguishes scientific activity from other fields, like philosophy is the formalistic methodology. The logical positivists who took this to the extreme actually envisioned a 'unified science' as one of the central goals of doing science.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that much of philosophical discourse, disagreement, in particular, concerns disagreement about fundamental methodology. I don't think that's even something philosophers would disagree with. Theologians, continental philosophers, analytical philosophers, postmodernists and so forth all have vast disagreements about what the tools, or even the purpose of philosophy is.

Likewise, when theories of justice are concerned, religious scholars and bioethicists don't primarily disagree about the results or evidence of some process, they disagree about fundamental assumptions on how to make inquiries at all. That's usually not the issue (or a secondary issue) in science.

<comment><USER14> How would science be applied to determine that prices should exist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interestingly, I see these behaviors most often in pseudoscientific and fringe communities. For example, in the Flat Earth community, there are constant appeals to various bogus arrangements of mathematical and physical principles, and an insistence that all evidence is being considered in a scientific manner.

<comment><USER16> I see the opposite, these behaviors seem most espoused by intelligent folk, who know there is value in science but whose opinions are riddled with emotional bias, as well as the media and politicians, who in turn know that the words "science" and "fact" can be used to appeal to intelligent folks' emotions. You can see this clearly when politicians claim to be "leading with science and facts".

It's all appeal to authority or emotion, with some science going on, but mostly scientism.

 _edit: You can replace "intelligent folk" with "intelligentsia", as to not imply any IQ difference. I'm contrasting "fringe communities" with the more mainstream "intelligentsia". The difference at play is perceived intelligence, not actual._

<comment><USER15> This is a common misconception. Flat Earthers aren't unintelligent, as your wording implies. They are _misled_ and _miseducated_. Indeed, humans have roughly been at their current level of intelligence for a hundred millennia, and show no signs of either getting especially smarter or dumber.

Since I anticipate somebody appealing to the Flynn effect [0] or similar improvements in intelligence-testing scores across the recent centuries, I would head them off by mentioning Spearman's hypothesis [1]. The obvious reading of the hypothesis is horribly racist, but we can take its contrapositive: If there are largely no changes between humans in recent millennia, then the differences in testing scores are due to cultural biases in the construction of the test and the education of people. And it happens to be the case, due to pedigree collapse [2], that we can be mathematically confident in the homogeneity of humanity (to say nothing of confidence from molecular biology [3]).

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

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearman%27s_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearman%27s_hypothesis)

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

[3] [https://www.nature.com/articles/ng1435](https://www.nature.com/articles/ng1435)

<comment><USER17> > If there are largely no changes between humans in recent millennia, then the > differences in testing scores are due to cultural biases in the construction > of the test and the education of people.

Not being sarcastic, I suppose things you see in IQ tests like spacial manipulation are culturally biased in that certain cultures give kids shape- in-the-hole toys, teach them shapes, have geometry classes, etc. You could say improvements in intelligence scores are teaching to the test. You could also say we're standing on the shoulders of giants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I blame the lack of philosophical and logical training of the sort that teaches how to spot fallacies, what a good argument looks like, how to outline one's thought process, etc.

<comment><USER14> It seems even more is the understanding that other disciplines are useful for answering other questions; that science or the scientific method cannot be used to answer every question.

It makes discussions with people who feel this way nearly impossible because when coming up against questions science can't answer, they reject all answers because no scientific "proof" has been provided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Science is a pursuit of relating physical effects with causes, without consideration of ultimate consequences of such knowledge and its applications. In contrast, other animals just focus on their biological needs and don't care about understanding, using or influencing their surroundings and changes in it, beyond what is needed for their basic survival needs. All scientific achievements were unnecessary for the goals of human survival and evolution.

<comment><USER20> Maybe humans are some of the only animals smart enough to put other things above survival.

Is spending eternity in the cramped room of Paleolithic life satisfying? (And by "eternity" I guess I mean the remaining lifetime of the Sun or biosphere[0].)

To me, it's not. I'd rather sacrifice my basic survival and that of the whole species for something greater. (Especially since "survival" is a zero-sum, doomed goal in the long-run anyway.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbbwrfp9toE&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbbwrfp9toE&feature=youtu.be&t=45) unironically. xD

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Fut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Future_of_the_Earth,_the_Solar_System_and_the_universe)

<comment><USER19> Satisfaction and happiness were wrong goals! Producing mutations that can fit better was the only goal. After pursuing the wrong goals, you can't prove whether today's life is more satisfying or happier than paleolithic life. By evolution standards, the humans are weaker now (due to dependencies on many things) than ever.

<comment><USER21> Evolution has no standards.

<comment><USER19> you know what I meant. Biologically, human got less capable, less fit into the ecosystem and less tolerable for changes. That's how evolution measures the progress of a species.

<comment><USER21> What I mean is you are attributing virtue to an emergent process. Evolution doesn't care, and survival in primordial forest is not any more "important" metric than existence elsewhere, elsehow.

Either way the human species are perhaps the most successful in fitness and survival of all thus far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my experience, the problem largely stems from, and the people to blame are, in-fact the arrogant atheists that use science as an argument against anything non-rational. You know the type I'm talking about. And to be clear, I'm not saying there aren't those times on all sides, but here me out.

It reminds me of a video I came across a few years ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDu2dgTT5t4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDu2dgTT5t4). It's a debate between an atheist professor (from University of Arizona?) and a christian professor (from MIT?) where they polled the audience at the end to determine a winner. The prompt was not "does God exist". The prompt was "does science refute God". The atheist spent the whole time trying to disprove God by saying he'll believe in a god if the stars align and send him a sign. The christian spent the time arguing that it doesn't matter whether anybody believes in god or not. Science is simply not a tool that can be used to make any statements on the metaphysical, whatsoever. And concepts like religion, morality, ethics, etc. only make sense in that realm.

My two takeaways were 1. how annoying it was that the atheist missed the subtlety in the prompt and insisted on trying to disprove _God_ rather than discussing the actual prompt of whether science _can_ actually study things that aren't observable. Perhaps maybe that's the definition of a true rationalist, though. And 2. how sad it was that the audience also seemed to miss it, voting for the pompous atheist at the end. As far as I could discern, the atheist failed to provide any argument leading to the conclusion that science can refute God, irrespective of whether anyone believes in a God or not.

Which brings me back to my point: things should not _have_ to be scientific to be valid, socially. You should not have to argue that psychology, or economics is a pseudo/soft science in order to validate funding it. An archeologist or historian should not feel invalidated if they need to sprinkle in some interpretation to connect dots between the facts at hand. In fact, applying scientific method to domains where it does not apply is at best wasteful and at worst counterproductive. The whole "science vs the arts" mindset is a false dichotomy. There's a lot of useful knowledge to be gained that is neither rational nor strictly artistic. But if we reduce it to that socially, then you _need_ to argue that you pursuit is someone rational and scientific in order to justify it to peers, etc. And I do blame the "asshole atheist" for that reductionist mentality.

I think everyone should read some Thomas Kuhn. It's interesting to look at what happens when the popular rational dogma itself changes. Rationalists and even atheists are equally susceptible to dogma. And sometimes it's not about whether you're right or wrong. It's having the humility to admit that there might be another way to skin the cat that ultimately leads to real progress.</comment>


Turning Soybeans into Diesel Fuel Is Costing Billions - happy-go-lucky https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/01/16/577649838/turning-soybeans-into-diesel-fuel-is-costing-us-billions <comment><AUTHOR> Biodiesel is still way more environmentally friendly than ethanol, which is also heavily subsidized. And the idea of biofuels displacing food production also generically applies to any biofuel, again including Ethanol.

This kinda reads like a corn industry hit-piece on a rival technology.

Besides, having third-world countries be dependent on US exports of (heavily subsidized) surplus food is one of the things that causes famines (shortages in the US come out of exports first), and continues the cycle of economic dependency (domestic producers cannot compete with heavily subsidized US exports). The actual fix here would be to develop foreign food production _and then have the US reduce emissions to offset_.

<comment><USER2> Ethanol has never made much sense to me. Drill and pump petroleum, process into gasoline (for tractors), and fertilizers, grow corn, turn into ethanol., It's the equivalent of getting a crisp new $100 bill from the bank, recycling it immediately and printing a $1 bill from the "recycled" paper and calling it an environmental success.

<comment><USER3> It depends on whether the ethanol is generating net positive energy. If I burn one joule of petroleum to get two joules of ethanol, it's a net success. If I burn two joules of petroleum to get one joule of ethanol, it's a net failure.

I very much doubt it would have survived as long as it has as a technology if it were a net energy loss.

<comment><USER4> > I very much doubt it would have survived as long as it has as a technology > if it were a net energy loss.

Most of the assessments I have seen generally always show that bio-ethanol is a net loss. Only subsidies keep it afloat.

None of the bio-* will make any sense until we have a lot more renewable electricity on the grid. At that point, producing bio-* will basically become an energy storage solution and a way to soak up excess energy production that you couldn't store any other way.

<comment><USER5> economically a net loss or ecologically?

I sort of assume both, but I'd like to hope for one of them.

<comment><USER6> Both. Here's some data from the late Prof. MacKay: [http://www.withouthotair.com/Errata.html#284](http://www.withouthotair.com/Errata.html#284) :

" 1 acre produces 122 bushels of corn per year, which makes 122 x 2.6 US gallons of ethanol, which at 84000 BTU per gallon would mean a power per unit area of {0.2 W/m^2}; however, the energy inputs required to process the corn into ethanol amount to 83,000 BTU per gallon; so 99% of the energy produced is used up by the processing, and the net power per unit area is about {0.002 W/m^2}. The only way to get significant net power from the corn-to-ethanol process is to ensure that all co-products are exploited; including the energy in the co-products, the net power per unit area is about 0.05 W/m^2."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fueling ground transport with bio-fuels probably doesn't make long-term sense -- the economics for battery electric already look like they're better. Bio- fuels for jet aircraft may make long-term sense though, because aircraft are vastly more weight sensitive than ground transport. Even though jet aircraft individually consume a lot of fuel, the entire air transportation sector is only responsible for a relatively small fraction of overall petroleum usage (on the order of 5%, I think). Fueling the worlds entire transportation sector with bio-fuels just isn't practical. Fueling 5% of it with bio-fuels might well be, though -- in particular the 5% where battery-electric is just not going to be feasible. That doesn't mean the current soybean to diesel programs make sense, but instead of canceling them, maybe we should be modifying them to produce jet-compatible fuel instead.

<comment><USER8> I was also once an advocate of bio-fuel for mobile size/weight restricted transportation applications. For a 5% minority, it seems to make sense. Soybeans to fuel doesn't make sense, however. For awhile, the cheapest biodiesel in Houston was made from animal slaughter byproducts. You had to watch out for the winter, however, as that stuff had a rather high gelling and solidification temperature. It also has very high hysteresis, so the melting temperature of the resulting wax-like substance can be much higher than the freezing temp, as high as 60 degrees F. I know, because it temporarily bricked my car, and ruined my relationship with my Mercedes mechanic.

I don't think that stuff would be good for aviation. Maybe palm or algae derived?

<comment><USER7> I know jet aircraft have been tested with bio-fuel of some sort, but I don't know how they handle the gelling problem. I'm kind of assuming that the fuel tanks would need to be heated to make it work. On the flip side, if you wanted to use ethanol then the low temperatures wouldn't be a problem, but the big trade-off there is ethanol has a much lower energy density per unit weight.

<comment><USER9> There are two ways to convert a fatty acid to a volatile fuel: you can convert it to an ester or an alkane. Biodiesel is comprised of esters; biokerosene is made of alkanes. Converting fats to biodiesel is a much simpler process, which is why biodiesel is common and biokerosene has yet to take off -- currently, biokerosene is made by hydrogenation, and hydrogen usually comes from fossil fuels. This is described here:

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ulf_Neuling/publication...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ulf_Neuling/publication/269290472_Conversion_routes_for_production_of_biokerosene- status_and_assessment/links/57ecd5b908ae92eb4d266cfc.pdf)

The most land-efficient way to produce fats from crops is by far the palm oil fruit ( [http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html](http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html) ), but because most cropland is already used for growing food, most palm oil plantations are on recently cleared forest, which gives palm oil an undeservedly bad reputation (farmers in Southeast Asia would simply grow something else on cleared forest if not for oil palms).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the end of the article:

 _In fact, China wants so much soy meal that it 's boosted global supplies of soy oil, because soybeans, when they're crushed, yield both meal and oil. By satisfying China's demand for meal, soy processors inevitably end up with plenty of oil to sell, too._

So if soy meal is what's driving the Soy market, doesn't that limit the environmental cost for soy used for oil, since the oil is effectively a waste product from the soy meal production?

<comment><USER11> Soy oil a waste product? Hardly. It can be used for all manner of food preparations.

<comment><USER12> Waste product according to the driving force.

<comment><USER13> Just as Diesel used to be a "byproduct" of gasoline refinement. But of course manufacturers want to monetize everything they possibly can and did so with diesel.

<comment><USER14> Originally, gasoline was a byproduct of kerosene (lamp oil) refinement, and simply thrown into waste (even dumped into rivers). The man best known for getting rich by utilizing this byproduct was John D. Rockefeller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The US used to have a policy of paying farmers to maintain unused production capacity - ie, to leave some of their fields fallow. This creates an emergency-response capability: if some event shrinks the country's or the world's food production capacity, then that capacity can be activated. This policy was politically problematic because of the conspicuous waste, and economically problematic because fallow land can't necessarily be converted into food production fast enough.

Mandating use of biodiesel seems like a better way of achieving the same goal: it ensures extra food-production capacity is maintained.

Plus, it reduces the amount of soybean oil being used in food. That stuff's unhealthy (very high omega-6 content), and apparently there's a huge amount of it being produced essentially as a byproduct of soy meal.

<comment><USER11> I dunno. Back in the day farmers used a system called crop rotation to maintain the soil.

One year they planted crop A, the next they planted crop B, and the next they left it fallow.

This was before industrial fertilizes mind you, but leaving part of the land fallow is not a bad thing.

<comment><USER16> Farmers today still understand this - better than most non-farmers appreciate. Anybody still farming today is a decent business person, and that means making sure your land stays healthy so your farm has a future.

Industrial fertilizers have definitely changed the rules and allow farmers to shift the traditional cycles, but the same principles of caring for the land still apply. Crop rotation is still common, but some land is so much more productive for some uses than others that it makes sense to "weight" the rotation with fertilizers.

<comment><USER11> Yeah i fear that very few acknowledge, never mind appreciate, the kind of long term outlook one develops as a farmer.

Lifestock, crops, all that happens over years, not weeks or months like in most industries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it me or terms like 'dumping' is only ever used in one direction and when the US exports heavily subsidized agricultural products, it's just plain old free market trade.

<comment><USER18> I don't think it's uncommon to say that the US dumps cheap corn on the world markets, especially Mexico. Or, in so much as that's talked about at all, 'dumped' isn't uncommon terminology.

Or maybe I just have cynical friends.

<comment><USER17> Ya, I don't mean in private conversations. In corporate media.

<comment><USER18> Oh, then I'm afraid I'm unqualified to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those of us interested in agro-ecology (Permaculture, etc.) David Blume makes a great case for small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated into your permie farm. Pretty much any sugar or carbs can be fermented to make alcohol. The byproducts can all be reused directly on the farm. The chemical elements that make up the fuel all come from air and water so your nutrients and trace minerals etc. are retained on the farm, the alcohol fuel is essentially packaged sunshine.

He's got a comprehensive book "Alcohol Can Be a Gas!" [http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/](http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Sure but how much is it saving us in the long term by being carbon neutral?

<comment><USER21> Are they carbon neutral?

Sure the initial carbon dumped into the atmosphere to plow the fields is a short term increase, but then you're also deforesting lands to grow them, which permanently adds more carbon into the atmosphere.

<comment><USER22> > but then you're also deforesting lands to grow them

Other than anecdotal evidence, do you have any source for this?

The cost to remove trees and put that land into production is quite high. Even then, most forested land is poor for growing crops. I would be very surprised to learn that in the US, farmers are removing trees and preparing the land to till on a large scale.

<comment><USER23> Most of the land in the US East of the Mississippi was forested, cut down, and turned into farmland. Some marginal lands have returned to forest like in upstate New York and in the Appalachia Mountains, but Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and other mid-western states are/were the heart of US agricultural production. They are slowly beginning covered by urban and suburban development. I believe that people thought farming was not possible if the land did not already support trees. They were mostly right before irrigation and scientifically bred crops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Background. My family are gardeners since generations back. We are on a sourcing trip in Brazil to buy new plants where bio ethanol are made. Farmers inform us on the fields that the bio ethanol production is very resource instensive. Basically growing sugar plants which are the source used to make ethanol sucks up all the nutrients from the ground. It also uses a lot of water. Politicians back home fully sold on the "green" aspects of bio ethanol subsidies the ethanol fuel without knowing the growing damaging consequences.

Soybeans may be similar to Sugar. You have to ask if it's really clean also the growing part not just the fuel.

A greener way is to put up electricity lines over highways. Then trucks can be driven electrically without hauling lots of resource instensive batteries. The mining of lithium in truck production scale probably is not clean. Mining is one of the largest emitters of co2 in the world.

Cop report on largest co2 emitters doing 70% of the emissions. [https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1...](https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon- Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240)

</comment><comment><USER25> I personally believe that much of the requirements on bio-diesel and other crop-fed fuel sources are likely at least half motivated by courting heartland swing states.

</comment><comment><USER26> Recognizing it is a little tangential to this article, it seems to me there would be a great benefit to the USA's domestic environmental policy if the Iowa caucus wasn't so early. Food to fuel is a tragic waste of resources.

</comment><comment><USER27> I guess my take is simpler than a lot of the arguments floating around here. if the current price tag is not acceptable, what price would be? Or, are we really saying that we'd rather spend the money elsewhere?

Biodiesel has some advantages, and many disadvantages. To me, I could see this being a part of a energy mix, but it doesn't seem like it is worth the money we are spending on it today, given that we could get better renewable energy/dollar in several other ways. If anything must be spent here, it seems we need some research to figure out how to do this better.

</comment><comment><USER28> Just learned from a neighbor that unwanted meat scraps is used to create diesel or biodiesel. Can't recall which; either way, he said they're not selling drums above plant costs but have to keep the machines running for environmental compliance. Specifically, Crude Oil plants with less demand are switching to this.

</comment><comment><USER29> There is an episode from West Wing that touches on how awful Ethanol really is, really opened my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER30> What I understand is that ethanol can be produced from, among many things, byproducts of corn.

</comment><comment><USER31> TLDR 'Scott Irwin, an economist at the University of Illinois calculates...the extra cost for biodiesel comes to about $1.80 per gallon right now, meaning that the biofuel law is costing Americans about $5.4 billion a year'.

'Biodiesel is very expensive, relative to petroleum diesel'

'Defenders of biodiesel insist that it's a much cleaner fuel than regular diesel, because it doesn't come from the ground, but from soybean plants that capture carbon dioxide from the air as they grow. In fact, by the EPA's calculations, replacing petroleum-based fuel with biodiesel will cut greenhouse emissions at least in half.

A growing number of environmentalists, however, say that this calculation is dead wrong. They say that if more soybeans are needed to make fuel in addition to food, it inevitably means that people somewhere on Earth will have to plow up grasslands or cut down forests in order to grow that additional supply — and clearing such land releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.'

<comment><USER32> Mandating its existence has other strategic advantages as well -- oil price shocks can and will happen in the future, so having the infrastructure to manufacture biodiesel and ethanol in place has a benefit as well.

There's a short, medium and long term outlook here. In the short term, there's a wastage of $5.4B. In the long term, burning things for fuel is bad. In the medium term, being able to moderate swings or ensure minimum supply of fuel mitigates risk that endanger the economy as a whole.

<comment><USER33> But this doesn't actually work yet. Oil prices are transmitted through to biofuels because the biofuel supply chain depends critically on fossil fuel inputs. For example, planting, harvesting, and transport of corn and soy feedstock is currently completely reliant on fossil-fueled machinery. This may change in the future, but the current reality is no better than a 1-to-1 transformation of fossil fuel into biofuel.

<comment><USER34> >This may change in the future, but the current reality is no better than a 1-to-1 transformation of fossil fuel into biofuel.

I was with you until this. a brief thought experiement makes it seem impossible that it would be 1 to 1, but rather that some smaller amount of fossil fuel used would yield a much larger amount of biofuel

<comment><USER33> This topic is way too complex to be experimented upon by mere thought. For example, take a gander at this discussion on corn ethanol EROEI a few years back. Lots of data, detailed analysis, vigorous debate, and a headline conclusion of an EROEI of 1.07.

There's a lot of debate about this, with numbers varying due largely to differing assessments of inputs and credits for byproducts, but I have never seen a convincing EROEI for corn ethanol over about 2.

EDIT: I forgot to include the link! Here it is: [http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/6760](http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/6760)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Diesel exhaust is carcinogenic (causes cancer) [2012] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinoge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinogens#Mixtures)

"IARC: DIESEL ENGINE EXHAUST CARCINOGENIC" [PDF] [https://www.iarc.fr/en/media- centre/pr/2012/pdfs/pr213_E.pdf](https://www.iarc.fr/en/media- centre/pr/2012/pdfs/pr213_E.pdf)

... Soybeans are also useful for bioplastics.

<comment><USER36> That's for dinosaur diesel. Biodiesel would have a different set of combustion byproducts. Probably still carcinogenic though, at least in the state of California. High combustion temps tend to do that.

<comment><USER37> It's not so much what comes out chemically but what comes out physically. And happens to be particulate matter meaning partly combusted hydrocarbons in the form of soot. The soot is an inhalation hazard and has been linked to asthma and lung cancer.

<comment><USER38> Do I remember correctly that fully burned pure diesel yields water and CO2? Soot is usually partially burned fuel plus a percentage of contaminants?

<comment><USER36> That can't be right because where would the sulfur go? Not to mention all of the other junk in there.

<comment><USER38> Per wikipedia, pure diesel is moderate size hydrocarbon chains. Everything else is impurities... so burning pure diesel in a 100% oxygen environment would yield water and COn gases.

Of course, the rest of the world introduces different combustion products, including sulfur as part of the fuel oil fractions not completely distilled away.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some Insights into Cardano´s Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coinfabrik.com/some-insights-into-cardanos-blockchain/ <comment><USER2> Does this even matter?

Alt coin using blockchain is a dead idea. They cant scale without centralization, and they dont have the 50+% BTC dominance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you please expand on your idea?</comment></comment>


More than 1k TSA employees have tested positive for coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2020/07/09/more-than-1000-tsa-employees-have-tested-positive-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> Would be nice if they could also say how many people work for the TSA, how many were hospitalized, and how many died. 1000 by itself is a meaningless number. Geography is also important in epidemiology

So sick of the media picking click bait numbers and never telling the whole story, and most times the truth for that matter... They seem to be the real underlying problem in contemporary society, the thing that needs to be dealt with most, swiftly and directly.</comment>