Electric cars are not the answer to air pollution, says UK adviser - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/04/fewer-cars-not-electric-cars-beat-air-pollution-says-top-uk-adviser-prof-frank-kelly <comment><USER2> > "Encouragingly, attitudes toward car ownership do appear to be changing, > with younger Londoners increasingly replacing little-used vehicles with car > club membership and ride-sharing apps," he said.

I'm not sure an environmental conscience is the reason, rather the cost of keeping your car taxed and insured, then finding somewhere for it to stay in London, and then finding a use for it, outweighs simply using public transport.

The article doesn't talk about electric cars reliance on whatever powers the national grid of that country - and they can only be as green as the country's means of energy production[1], although that is still better than a petrol/diesel car for most countries.

[1] [http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars- green](http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars-green)

<comment><USER3> > The article doesn't talk about electric cars reliance on whatever powers the > national grid of that country

Right! You'd be delusional to think that EVs are somehow solving pollution. However, they are almost like debt consolidation - each EV on the street becomes cleaner as each coal power plant is decommissioned. Burning dead dinosaurs in an engine will always be burning deal dinosaurs.

<comment><USER4> I hope it's not delusional to note that, even if you're burning fossil fuels to power your EVs, at least you're not doing it in the middle of urban environments, mere feet from houses, businesses, and sidewalks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Particles from brake and tyre dust are bigger than from exhaust fumes, so less dangerous. Electric vehicles use regenerative braking so they uses brakes less. But they are heavier, but I think electric vehicle are still way better than other vehicles.

<comment><USER6> When I test drove a Model S last year the rep proudly told me that many (around 10 I believe) of the Model S's in the U.K. had done over 150,000 miles and none had had a brake pad change yet thanks to the regen.

I would say that the car slowed down about twice as quickly as a conventional car and I used the brakes much less than normal and unless another car was coming, the speed at the intersection was perfect for rolling through without using the brakes.

This is all anecdotal of course but interesting change nonetheless I thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tires and brake disks/pads aren't cars. If the chemicals that make them are so dangerous, why not focus on replacements? Last I checked, bicycles have tires that wear out too.

<comment><USER8> > Tires and brake disks/pads aren't cars.

I think they're part of a car, aren't they? I mean, you cannot drive a car with no tires, and it's advisable that you should also have brake disks/pads.

<comment><USER9> Well with regard to brake discs/pads I'm surprised that the electric car manufacturers are working towards a fully regenerative system.

If you could return all of the forward momentum as energy to the battery that would remove the need for discs and pads.

<comment><USER10> Mechanical brakes have two major advantages over regenerative braking.

One is that they can handle extremely high transient power levels. For example, maximum-effort braking at high speed can easily involve over a megawatt of power in the initial stages. Dumping that power into your brake pads and rotors as heat is fairly easy to manage. Dumping that into your battery without wrecking it is much, much harder. For comparison, a high-end Tesla can charge at up to 120kW, and can discharge around 600kW in short bursts.

The other advantage is that they're cheap, reliable, and can easily be built with redundancy. You can lose all of your car's computers _and_ half of your brake hydraulics and still be able to stop the car.

In order to have no mechanical brakes at all, you'd need a battery that could charge fast enough to absorb the power of full braking at maximum speed, and a sufficiently redundant drivetrain that you could still make regen work even if major components failed.

<comment><USER11> But the important thing isn't that the mechanical brakes exist, it's that they get used. Presumably with computers driving cars and regional coordination, you would have cars doing mostly regenerative braking and reserve the mechanical brakes for emergencies.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, and this is more or less how it is already. Hybrid and EV drivers report their brakes lasting far, far longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "It only reduces pollution by half, so there is no point"

<comment><USER13> More importantly, cars are not even the main pollution source in general.

We could probably ban cars completely if not for social and lobby reasons. (Replace with rail and public transport.) But that is only a quarter of total pollution anyway.

The real trouble is UK either needs desert solar with huge investment, nuclear power or drastic reduction in power use.

Electric cars are not even a stopgap measure.

<comment><USER14> So it's kind of a virtuous cycle though. First cell phones and laptops drove up demand for energy storage and so battery tech and production efficiency improved and prices fell to the point putting them in cars was kind of sort of economically not insane.

Now cars are driving up demand by another leap of magnitudes since each car requires magnitudes more batteries than a phone. The number of phones and cars people would like to own per capita is well within an order of magnitude though it's probably close.

Eventually this enables storage of solar derived power an again order of magnitude larger application than cars in at first niche applications then eventually it will be broad based.

Because just like the massive overprovisioning of dark fiber in the dotcom boom, one producers start competing in what is in some sense a dollar auction. The momentum of their growth and the people and processes tasked with ensuring that growth will fight to keep growing supply since it is their livelihood and perceived purpose to do so (both to grow the capacity and to justify that growth, those that don't justify won't be as likely to do the growth and will be selected against).

This will lead to a massive amount of batteries being produced since there doesn't seem to be any supply limits beyond how many mines we can make (and then ocean water than can be filtered for lithium from what I have read). I therefore think that "the cars are only 1/2 as polluting and thus pointless" statement lacks vision and an understanding of the positive externalities of growing electric cars.

The spin off tech is great. ICE cars have played that out. What was their most recent spinoffs? Tar sands / fracking? I guess we got a lot of cheap natural gas which was a step forward and what's really crushing coal. But if we get another oil spike I don't see the money flowing to oil just a much more agressive push towards EVs and battery tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Electric cars use regen braking so their breaking pads see many times less use than those of gas powered cars...

<comment><USER16> Yes, I had the same thought. Has anyone quantified the difference?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm actually super excited about eliminating noise pollution when evs are common.

Imagine walking through downtown midday and it sounds like 2am.

<comment><USER18> Tires are as loud if not louder than the drivetrain noise of most modern cars

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think once we have automated cars people in major cities will stop owning cars. Membership to a "club" makes a ton more sense if you can call up a car on an app and it drives itself o your location.

<comment><USER20> Unfortunately this will make the pollution worse. For example if I drive my car to work, my car does 6 miles round trip . If someone else does the same in total we did 12 miles. However if we share one car and the car needs to go even a mile between two places, it will have to drive significantly more.

<comment><USER21> You're driving a 3 mile distance? This is exactly why electric cars are not the messiah of transportation.

<comment><USER20> Well, I can't walk on the highway so yes I have to drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Of course it won't "solve" the pollution in cities. It will lessen it to a greater extent.

Power is generated away from.l cities and it is easier to mitigate the pollution all in one place.

As other people have mentioned regenerative breaking helps too.

No reason we can't encourage people out of cars at the same time as transitioning the remaining vehicles to electric.

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, of course one should walk or bike instead of taking the car, but if this is not possible EV are much better than regular cars, and if it's not the ultimate solution to air pollution it doesn't mean it doesn't help.

</comment><comment><USER24> The title is misleading. The main argument of Professor Frank Kelly from KCL is not against EV but against all cars. So burn calories by walking and cycling or use public transits, which is appropriate for highly populated megacities with severe congestion problems, let alone public health concerns.

<comment><USER25> _The title is misleading. The main argument of Professor Frank Kelly from KCL is not against EV but against all cars._

Automated EV cars are a necessary step! Once automated EV cars become the norm, there will be even more value placed on Public Spaces of Value. Right now, the dirt and fumes from current automotive technology -- along with the requirement for vast paved areas for parking -- make it harder to achieve the traditional urban Public Spaces of Value so common in the US in the 18th and 19th centuries. (That said, not having horse excrement everywhere was an environmental boon of cars.)

Once automated EV cars become the norm, society will think about urban transport differently, and we will change the urban environment in just as drastic a fashion as we did to make way for internet combustion engine cars.

Right now, public spaces most often have to be of a large granularity. We can return to a time when urban Public Spaces of Value were ad-hoc and adjacent to residences and businesses.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7fRIGphgtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7fRIGphgtk)

<comment><USER26> I don't think autonomous cars are going to be more efficient than public transport since you'll still need plenty of them at peak time.

And plenty of autonomous cars means traffic jams.

They can't replace public transport on that aspect as the transport density is way higher in a train or a bus than on individual autonomous vehicles.

Sure they are going to revolutionise car ownership but I don't think they will change the daily commute for the average office worker.

<comment><USER27> I have to disagree.

Most traffic jams are more a factor of human nature then anything else. Ever been in a slowdown due to drivers checking out a fender bender going in the other direction on a divided highway? Combine the lack of unneeded slow downs with closer following distances with fewer crashes and road capacity will go way up.

<comment><USER28> > Most traffic jams are more a factor of human nature then anything else. Ever > been in a slowdown due to drivers checking out a fender bender going in the > other direction on a divided highway? Combine the lack of unneeded slow > downs with closer following distances with fewer crashes and road capacity > will go way up.

Even with autonomous cars, roadways still have a peak capacity. Yes, the peak capacity will probably go up if every driver is driving "perfectly", but there will still be plenty of bottlenecks, whether those are slower moving trucks, crosswalks, traffic signals, etc. I'd guess that we might even see more traffic than we currently have because if you don't have to drive yourself, people are incentivized to take their car; even if it's slower than mass transit, sitting in your own car is more pleasant for most people than a train or bus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> hypothetically, forget friction (air, tire,..), then all energy injected with the accelerator must be remove by the break. So converting fuel to kinetic energy is only half of the emission. Breaking must save that energy and electric car (bike, truck,..) could do that.

edit: hokkos beat me :|

</comment><comment><USER30> This didn't even cover the part of my rant from a couple days ago (heavy electric cars in areas deriving a lot of power from coal)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14877569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14877569)

</comment><comment><USER31> Boil the ocean much? Clearly they are a step in the right direction, no?</comment>


A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-salaries-openai.html <comment><USER2> Misleading article and headline; a few celebrity researchers in high-up positions make this much. You can probably find some chemists who make $1M too if they have made it to executive positions.

Most AI researchers in industry make a lot of money, $200k+, but that is not so outrageous in the context of big tech companies.

And in fact the vast majority of AI researchers are making $20k-$30k a year, because they are graduate students.

<comment><USER3> And if they live in California 200k does not seem like a lot.

<comment><USER4> If the context simply is "median California household income", then it should seem like a lot, because it really still is a lot.

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

<comment><USER5> $200k in the bay area is like $90k where I'm from. It's a decent living, but if you've got a family it's not exactly upper class.

<comment><USER6> If you have a family it's not possible. Home prices average close to $1m. You'd have to save an entire years salary PRE tax to afford the down payment. That will take years and years to save.

If you're raising a family you'll likely need two $200k incomes to afford a house, and even then, it'll take at least 2 years to save for the down payment.

The Bay Area is for college kids and millionaires. That's it.

<comment><USER7> It's certainly possible. You just don't own a home, you rent. It's much like NYC in that regard - you don't own a detached home in NYC regardless of how rich you are, you rent a swanky loft or penthouse. At most you might buy a condo, but you can still find plenty of hedge fund managers or Google engineers that rent their permanent residence (and sometimes have over $1M in liquid assets).

In my wife's mom's group (which had a number of dual-tech-income couples working for places like Apple, Google, Palantir, Facebook, etc.), not a single parent owned their own home. I live in a small 13-unit townhome complex, and about 8 of the units have families with young kids.

<comment><USER8> Very interesting how affluent people still rent. I noticed the same in LA in a high end building. What is the reason? Having more money to invest in different asset classes instead of the biggest chunk being in real estate?

<comment><USER9> Freedom to move, don't want to deal with burdens of ownership, better ROI to rent, etc.

<comment><USER8> Can you describe better ROI to rent more in detail?

<comment><USER9> Investment opportunity cost. I've written articles about this:

[https://medium.com/@usaar33/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-home- in-t...](https://medium.com/@usaar33/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-home-in-the-bay- area-right-now-9eff37da8d6)

[https://medium.com/@usaar33/an-up-to-date-buy-or-rent- calcul...](https://medium.com/@usaar33/an-up-to-date-buy-or-rent- calculator-22d0bf9bbbb5)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > A third big name in the field, the roboticist Pieter Abbeel, made $425,000, > though he did not join until June 2016, after taking a leave from his job as > a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Those figures all > include signing bonuses.

425k after signing bonus is probably closer to 300-350k base + annual bonus, which feels low for someone in such a distinguished position (close to a typical specialized physician or big tech software engineer with 5-10 years of experience). After finishing my masters degree in machine learning in the mid-2000s, I immediately got job offers higher than my much more talented professors. To me, the real story is that academia has set the compensation bar low for people adding so much value.

Edit: to be clear I know these salaries are high and people in my field are lucky to be making so much. But I also don't think it's accurate that people in the field are overpaid, which titles like OP may make it seem.

<comment><USER11> Yeah its really not that high. I was reading the Ian Goodfellow, creator of GANs, was only making 800k at google. Which is honestly, really low for someone who has done ground breaking research in neural networks.

<comment><USER12> Yeah that's pretty insulting, honestly. Black or Sholes were making >10m as thought leaders in banks. It's surprising to me that finance is so passe as a career despite the fact, as Matt Levine said, "they are run as employee run co-ops." In otherwords, big big money. Entry level analysts at my old firm were making over 250k total comp.

<comment><USER11> People in tech generally have no clue of how much money gets made in finance

<comment><USER13> Just put your hand in the giant rushing river of money and see what sticks...

<comment><USER12> The oyster farmer eats more oysters than everyone else. The money farmer eats more money than anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 7-figure salaries have been a thing for quite a while at Facebook, Google and definitely at hedge funds. Right now, you can make a half million a year or more if you're willing to optimize the low-level code in any of the major AI frameworks.

If you publish a major conference paper, 7 figures is pretty easy to attain. You don't have to be in the 0.001% just the top 5%. That's hard work but it's doable.

The only thing that's remotely fungible in AI is python-based data scientists who can do little more than port new data to existing models open sourced on GitHub. And even then they do pretty well because of the huge demand.

I don't see that changing anytime soon. I believe expecting automated systems to replace data scientists is the same level of naivete as believing we'd reach L5 autonomy in a few years in 2014.

Anthony Lewandowski was making 120 million dollars a year when he left Waymo. If you're an AI expert in the valley and you're not making at least $500k, you are one job hop away from doing so if you play your cards remotely right.

<comment><USER15> > If you publish a major conference paper, 7 figures is pretty easy to attain.

How does it work in practice? Let's say I just published a major conference paper. Where do I apply for my million dollar job? Who do I reach out to?

<comment><USER16> You don't know? Usually at NeurIPS and CVPR the applications are next to the tea and coffee they put out in the mornings. Not sure about ICML.

<comment><USER15> I did not know about these conferences. I googled the first one and found a headline about how tickets sold out in minutes. Is this why? Because everyone attending hopes to get a 6 figures job?

<comment><USER16> I'm being facetious, this is not at all true. At my company, we typically look for multiple major publications and you certainly don't get a million dollar job out of it.

<comment><USER14> Then the people who come to your company could probably do better elsewhere if money is all they care about. You work at Cruise am I right? I know someone personally who worked at Cruise who was making 7 figures. That sort of compensation is just not that unusual anymore.

But I've learned that money isn't everything the hard way. However, if you're whining about being underpaid, there's something you can do about it. There are plenty of solid reasons not to however especially if you enjoy your current gig and they're paying you sufficiently that you have a promising future. Money truly isn't everything.

<comment><USER16> I don't doubt that either people could do better elsewhere or that someone makes a million dollars, but it's disingenuous to claim that "If you publish a major conference paper, 7 figures is pretty easy to attain" when this is not true by most measures. It might happen to some people but "pretty easy" implies most fresh PhDs could do this.

<comment><USER14> I think you are embodying the notion "You miss all the shots you don't take." You're right that most fresh PhDs cannot do this (I did say top 5%). But I think we disagree as to why. You seem to think these positions do not exist and I know otherwise because I've been on both sides of the very same hiring process for which they do exist. The reason most new PhDs won't get them is because they lack the career experience to navigate the interview process to such a position. I'd love to see a world where someone teaches them those skills while they're still in academia. I sure could have used that.

I also know because the day I left academia myself long ago was a major payday for me. Finally, I know because people like Andrei Karpathy pulled it off because of his excellent communication skills, intelligence and the right background. And people like Mu Li pulled it off by associating themselves with an academic who who helped found AWS AI and in his case he landed a principal engineering position straight out of school. That's the sort of position one usually only gets after one to two decades of job experience.

Can we just agree to disagree here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting that you mention about Andrej Karpathy. I've long wondered about his meteoric rise. No doubt he's intelligent, but there's definitely more to the story. What do you think it is? Is it majorly because of the right timing and being under the right profs? His blog? His class? I'm currently a grad student. So if I want to replicate even an iota of it, how do I do it?

<comment><USER14> I think the turning point for him was his excellent presentation in the first youtube broadcast of cs231. If I remember correctly he was getting seven- figure offers before he even graduated from Stanford. I do not know him personally and I doubt I will ever meet him but we did compete for the same position at Tesla and I lost to a very worthy opponent. my only regret is that the final interview would have been with Elon Musk himself and I would have loved to meet him.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow, very interesting. Are you a PhD who works in this area too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this article just reeks of jealousy. What is wrong with paying people doing top research a top salary? Their skills are extremely rare. And I bet executives get way more anyway.

<comment><USER14> What's amazing to me is the same people who write articles like this don't blink at the salaries in Hollywood. A top-tier performer can get over a hundred million dollars per movie. A bottom-tier character actor or below the line talent barely gets by.

The difference in compensation here is nowhere near as bad as what happens in Hollywood.

<comment><USER17> Without commenting on quality of the journalism here nor making any judgements about the normative economics [1] of the situation described:

Hollywood actors salaries (or those of sports stars, or CEOs, or authors of best sellers or pop stars) are a known thing so you don't write a 'news' story about the magnitude they have obtained. AI researchers making large sums is not widely known so is 'news' and of interest to readers.

[1] [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/normativeeconomics.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/normativeeconomics.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> How replicable is this thing? Looking from a monetary perspective, is it worth getting a Ph.D. in AI? Assuming you like both academic research and working in the industry, if you were to make a choice whether to do a Ph.D. or not, how would you make it?

<comment><USER18> No, it's not. Im an AI researcher at a big tech company. It would have been far wiser financially to start as a software engineer after my Bachelor's.

Also, having a few NEURIPS or ICML papers is not a hiring guarantee any more. It's decidedly not 2015-17 any longer. In particular, I feel bad for the people who started their PhDs with $$$ in their eyes around that time.

Don't get me wrong, they will all be employable, but the field moves so fast, I have my doubts there will be cushy FAANG jobs for everyone capable of playing around with network architectures in a few years. It's a terrible idea to start one based on the hype few years ago.

<comment><USER19> Isn't this always the case though? A PhD is a long term investment and the field that you go into is probably not the one that will be hot when you finish your PhD. So driving your decisions on $$$ seems foolish at best.

<comment><USER20> Yep. If you're empty enough to follow a PhD solely for the money, there are far safer financial bets. Go into medicine or something. Not that I'd want to experience that bedside manner...

<comment><USER21> It is not fair to call someone "empty" because their motivation stems from something you don't share. It does not make their work and contribution any less difficult or necessary.

<comment><USER22> Though harsh and (of course) generalized, I think the word "empty" is a useful description here. Think of these meanings of empty:

      - "containing nothing; not filled or occupied"
      - "lacking meaning or sincerity"
      - "having no value or purpose"

In the context of academia, there is an expectation of a certain fundamental motivation; namely, to pursue knowledge in a particular field and share it back via writing and/or teaching.

If one lacks that primary motivation, they certainly "lack" it and are "not filled" with the academic ethos. So "empty" is a fair term.

Now, I understand the realities as well -- seeking publications, recognition, tenure, and funding are also political activities. But this does not contradict the underlying community norm that I mention above. In fact, it supports it -- it explains why so many people endure a tough, grueling, political process despite it not being their wheelhouse.

<comment><USER23> >If one lacks that primary motivation, they certainly "lack" it and are "not filled" with the academic ethos. So "empty" is a fair term.

No idea why you think this. A phd has a contrat with a salary, starting and end dates.

<comment><USER22> Re: "No idea why you think this."

My comment above makes an argument. You don't have to agree with it, but it should give you some idea about how I came to my conclusion.

<comment><USER23> Indeed, I should have expanded a bit, it was a bit disingenuous from me. But I don't think that academia's ethos is the primary motivation. It wasn't for me. The primary motivation for my phd was to get the doctor title and money afterward. It was a transaction between academia and me where they get a qualified engineer for a low price, and I get educated about research. No one ever talked to me about academia ethos. The closest thing about educating and sharing others my supervisor told me was "We might have a job opening for teaching and research after your phd if you are interested to further expand in Academia, but don't count on it. Such openings are rare".

So basically your conclusion doesn't go well with my experience. I only saw a contract with low salary and a lot of work on my end. It was worth it for me (I think?), so I accepted.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for telling us your story -- you make good points.

To what degree did you enjoy the process of learning, collaborating, teaching, writing, experimenting, and so on? I'd wager you did enjoy some or many of these... otherwise, it might have been a long slog. :/

Maybe the following story can convey part of my message. You might have seen movies about a wily protagonist villain (or a flawed, tenuous partnership between several) who meticulously plan to steal some priceless artifact from some nearly-impregnable facility. What drives such people? I don't think it is purely money -- there would be alternatives that would, rationally speaking, generate more income, on a risk-adjusted basis. In the case of the ninja-suit wearing infiltrator(s), I'd argue they fundamentally enjoy the process (the preparation, the planning, the deferred gratification, the _meaning_ ). Perhaps the same is true for people that pursue and complete a Ph.D. -- some get a decent financial payout, but on average, I don't think the degree made them better off financially compared to other alternatives (e.g. holding together some rotting infrastructure with bailing wire). They value the title, the activities, the identity, the community, the kind of work they do.

Seeking a job only for money doesn't really endow much meaning -- (Please, don't take this as an endorsement to go off and work for some harebrained startup when you have better options. :P) -- though I think there is plenty of meaning even in the mundane (e.g. rearranging JSON) to be found if you open yourself to experience (e.g. books with dragons about parsers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Please add (2018) to the title. Also, these are _celebrities_ , with some of the most important contributions in the field. They are like the top 0.001% of the field or something equally ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't think OpenAI is a nonprofit as they are planning to commercially license their technologies. Ok, they limit investor returns at one-hundred times their initial investment, but I'd hardly call that a non-profit in the sense of the word.

<comment><USER26> Wikipedia says that "OpenAI is the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP, whose parent organization is the non-profit organization OpenAI Inc."

<comment><USER27> It's kind of a weird structure, but I think more like a company than like a nonprofit in the short/medium term. The parent is a nonprofit organization, but it's not the same arrangement as Mozilla Foundation vs. Mozilla Corporation, where all earnings from the subsidiary go to the parent nonprofit. With OpenAI, the parent nonprofit only gets earnings _in excess of 100x return_. The for-profit company raises investment and returns any earnings to the investors until/unless they hit the 100x return mark. They call this a "capped profit" structure.

When it was founded in 2015, OpenAI _was_ originally a nonprofit, but restructured into this new arrangement earlier this year in order to be able to raise VC money: [https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from- nonprof...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from-nonprofit-to- capped-profit-to-attract-capital/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [2018]

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a year and a half old. I wonder to what extent it has still true now that the AI hype tsunami has receded ever so slightly.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you wanted to command, let's say $5-8 megabucks per year conservatively, I would sell the idea of self-programming systems. Automating software development to not need as many humans and implement prototype systems more rapidly is a business holy grail because it could significantly reduce the need for as many developers and their relatively large salaries. It will happen eventually, it's just a matter of time and who's going to profit that's the question. Furthermore, as automation intensifies over time, there will be overall fewer jobs but their salaries will continue to increase if they are related to automation and further reduction of jobs. If I were an AI researcher, I would be in self-programming systems, insist on patent assignment and consider forming a startup to deliver it as a hybrid cloud/on- prem SaaS... this would be the most obvious path to get rich from it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Serious question, is this value justified? I don't have any contact with AI development or AI researchers. Do they really bring that much value to the business? It makes sense that for Google, these positions would have almost unlimited clean data. But many companies are not Google.

<comment><USER32> How do you define "justified"? The field is so new, someone who really knows what they're doing could mean a difference between a large team spending years and getting nowhere remarkable, and improving state of the art every 6 months. With the same exact team. So would you rather get nothing for your money, or something valuable every 6-9 months? That's the question. These people are typically hired after trying pretty hard to get results out of generalists, and failing.

<comment><USER33> I think he's asking if these people produce positive marginal value to the company. The answer is usually yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> $2 million per year is very low for people at that level if you think about the potential profits that advanced AI can bring and compare the real world utility to that of, for example, a celebrity or professional sports player.

They are at least talking about AGI. If those people get anywhere close to AGI, they should start charging ten or hundred times more, because having that kind of technology could be worth hundreds of billions or more. So even though there is no indication they are close to it, if there is even a remote possibility of getting there, the salaries are questionable in the context of those potential astronomical profits.

</comment><comment><USER35> This ($1m total comp) is becoming more and more common. I know of a guy making $650k base and $400k in RSUs first year. Just a Java individual contributor, but with a reputation and buddies high up.

<comment><USER36> A $400k RSU grant is not $400k towards total compensation in the first year.

RSUs generally vest over 3-4 years, so at the end of the first 12-13 months, it's another $100k towards total comp.

You may or may not receive additional grants in future years. If you get $400k grants every year, you might get up to $1M/year, but not immediately.

<comment><USER35> This was monthly RSU grants vesting from day 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Computer science researchers should form partnerships like lawyers and doctors. They could extract far, far more value out of mega corps than they get paid as salary employees. We are at a moment when AI tech is so black box that they could create a company that is itself a black box.

<comment><USER38> This should work for all VC-funded companies and for the internet giants who can afford it. It's a form of wealth redistribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> (2018) and discussed at the time

</comment><comment><USER40> (2018)

</comment><comment><USER41> What sport of math is needed to learn this stuff? Is it linear algebra and some deferential calculus mostly?

</comment><comment><USER42> Is it worth putting the time into learning AI/ML at this point? Sure, crazy high salaries- but it seems inevitable that these are the very jobs that will be automated away first.

<comment><USER43> The crazy high salaries are "ideally" going to the ones who have both the soft skills and the technical prowess to automate away other people's jobs, not their own. This is one of the reasons STEM PhDs have become so attractive to industry--getting a PhD (especially from a good school) is a certification that the individual is capable of producing previously undocumented methods for replacing other people's jobs.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a live chat for HN? irc maybe? - <AUTHOR>

Just looking for a live chat about ideas and implementation questions. <comment><USER2> #startups on freenode.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, #startups is the de facto IRC channel for HN.</comment></comment>


CentOS 5.6 Finally Arrives: Is It Suitable for Business Use - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-mag.com/id/8608/

<comment><AUTHOR> Free registration required to read the whole thing.

a) This reads like a hit piece. Are things as bad as the author makes out? Are users frustrated, and snubbed when they offer help? Is the project really falling behind in users' opinions?

b) The article states that RHEL support subscription is $350/year. Excepting very young and poor businesses, I can't understand why a business that uses CentOS for its enterpriseness, and includes that in sales pitches, wouldn't just go directly to RHEL. Is there anything about CentOS besides $free that makes it better, in an enterprise context, than RHEL?

<comment><USER2> I didn't read the whole thing either (due to registration).

> Are things as bad as the author makes out? Are users frustrated, and snubbed > when they offer help? Is the project really falling behind in users' > opinions?

Look at the release history on wikipedia[1]. It was about 3 months from RHEL 5.6 to the Centos release, and it was been about 6.5 months since RHEL 6 was released (twitter account[4] says 'soon').

If you look at the mailing lists, it seemed (last time I looked) like a slightly unhealthy project, at least to this outsider. See "rollout strategies"[5] (skips around a bit) and "Door not hitting me on my way out"[6] (also skips around a bit).

I am hopeful that this all gets turned around (and it may already be turned around, I am not up to date) though, as Centos has been great for me in the past.

> The article states that RHEL support subscription is $350/year. Excepting > very young and poor businesses, I can't understand why a business that uses > CentOS for its enterpriseness, and includes that in sales pitches, wouldn't > just go directly to RHEL. Is there anything about CentOS besides $free that > makes it better, in an enterprise context, than RHEL?

I imagine for many it is indeed just about the cost. If you look at the RedHat purchasing guide[2], it can get quite expensive.

Aside: I know a few people who have looked into moving over to Scientific Linux[3]. I haven't heard how their testing has gone though.

[1]: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Centos#Releas...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Centos#Release_history)

[2]: <http://www.redhat.com/rhel/purchasing_guide.html>

[3]: <https://www.scientificlinux.org/>

[4]: <http://twitter.com/#!/centos>

[5]: [http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2011-May/thread.htm...](http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2011-May/thread.html)

[6]: [http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2011-April/thread.h...](http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2011-April/thread.html)

<edited for formatting></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hacking your flow state. How do you get in 'the zone'? - <AUTHOR> I've had this idea for a project I want to complete in my spare time (as part of my hobby). It involves small bits of coding, but not too much. Actually the vast bulk of it will be arranging bits of unstructured data into something more manageable and digestible, and doing a lot of organizing.
But one problem I'm having is how to get into the right state for this. I've read various articles online which address the issue of state: advice like have a cup of coffee beforehand, clean your workspace, write a clear outline of what needs to be done, etc
But I've tried all these and still can't stay focused. I probably have some mild form of ADD brought on by excessive scrolling through Twitter and whilst caffeine is nice, it only makes me jittery and makes me feel like I'm getting work done, but when measured, it's no different than being off caffeine, or 'sober'.
Are there any other tips besides the ones constantly being churned out online in articles on how to get in the zone and perform brilliant work? What hacks do you use to get in a flow state and do really focused work? <comment><USER2> Some ideas that work for me:

Use diagrams to have a visual/spatial map of the work and workpieces. PlantUML makes this quick/easy to do. Freeplane/Freemind is also helpful. It is then easy to place yourself quickly as working somewhere in a spatial map.

Work in planned chunks. "Serialize" and "deserialize" your mental state by having a captain's log. Use a markdown text file to note: What you are planning to do ( at the beginning of a session) - be concrete and specific. At the end of a session record what you did and need to do when you start next. Next session start by reading the previous entry. Occasionally review a few entries for trends. This is like a dev journal that includes dates times duration and comments about observations that can be used to tune your workflow. I.e. observations of what we're distractions, unexpected problems and timesinks, what worked unexpectedly well, etc.

You can then also plan in general when offline and get into the specifics when starting.

Use music to flow faster and to control the character of the flow mindset. Movie/game soundtracks are often cool as the music is designed to induce mood without distraction of focus. It also makes coding feel EPIC!

For me a short +-5 minutes of something epic like an Assassin's Creed theme helps me to enter a flow state and build up a mental map of what I'm working on and what tasks I should execute against. Something relatively relaxing and calm. Followed by something like fast paced dubstep to actually drive the work. When needing to unpack a problem that needs wider focus again something slower. When needing a directed drive something inspiring and paced.

</comment><comment><USER3> Find your self destructive behaviour and neutralise it. If you keep jumping to twitter, block twitter.

You'll subciously open a new tab, the connection will die and your conscious mind will be prompted by the change in sensory input caused by the unexpected block. At this point stop, stare at the screen, vocalise 'no, I'm in work mode' then wait another 5 seconds, and slowly flip back to the work.

Changing perspective helps for me too, listening to music 800% slower, and using timers to enter state helps focus my mind that something important is going on. Hope that helps!

</comment><comment><USER4> Flow for coding is not that different than for artists. Check out " drawing on the right side of the brain ". There is a technique in there to calm the brain by drawing your hand but keeping the drawing part (both the hand drawing and the image) out of your line of sight. Works quite well.</comment>


Need early feedback for a website that matches entrepreneurs, developers and designers - <AUTHOR> http://blitzmaker.com we needed a web app to match people for an upcoming camp, so i made blitzmaker. i am now getting feedback about the app, and trying to corner bugs and potential problems with the interface. any feedback appreciated, thanks! <comment><USER2> The menus at the top don't work. It took me ten tries (very bad) and conscious thought (far worse) to figure out that the little arrows next to the words were the trigger for the pulldowns. I would sweep the mouse over the word and see this menu flicker on and off. I thought your Javascript was broken or something.

The context is confusing. As someone who happens to be a freelance Drupal developer, I was curious about the project that wanted a Drupal developer. But the pitch is one line long. There's no indication of whether I'm signing up to be a startup partner with equity but no salary, an unpaid volunteer in a community project, a contract programmer working for someone with a budget of $13.95, or the recipient of spam from half a dozen sleazeball recruiters.

I realize that I may be criticizing a throwaway piece of scaffolding text. But, if I am, you need to design around a more useful piece of scaffolding text!

I know what nonprofit-org sites are for. I know what news.yc is for. I know what Rentacoder is for. What is your site for? The whole thing is so minimalist that I have no contextual clues.

<comment><AUTHOR> hey thanks for the comment. well, the menu is going to be corrected so people will have an easier time accessing the options.

about the drupal listing, the description was written by an existing member of the website, who thought one sentence would be enough. one thing though, interested visitors are supposed to ask questions to the user who posted the listing to ask for more info.

thanks again

<comment><USER2> Permit me to ramble for a bit.

There is no idea so great that a one-sentence description, made by a stranger, will cause me to send an email asking for more. There are too many scammers, cranks, and clueless people in the world. There are too many people who have no idea how hard it is to complete a successful project. There are too many people who are looking for something for nothing.

Of course, you folks are strangers, and yet you got me to give you some design advice -- twice! But you did quite a bit of work for this "free" advice -- you had to build an entire prototype site and post a link to it. _That_ is the kind of presentation -- a working, criticizable prototype -- that might get people interested in joining a random project. It's a lot more than one sentence.

Read this essay:

[http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2005/05/08/finding_discord_in_h...](http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2005/05/08/finding_discord_in_harmony)

and this more recent one, that cites it:

<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001017.html>

Other than providing working code -- or extensive mockups, or a detailed written proposal, or a compelling story -- the easiest way to get me interested in a collaboration is to get me interested in _you_. I don't care if you plan to cure cancer -- I want to know who you are, first. That takes time, and it takes words.

So, if people are going to meet and start collaborations on your site, you need to give them lots of room to converse, to get to know each other. You need to give them long comment threads and rambling discussions. (Like, um, news.yc. Score one for PG's design sense.) If you don't feel like building an entire social network (and you probably shouldn't) you need to encourage people to introduce themselves with links to Facebook, or LinkedIn, or their own blogs, or something. And you need to encourage them to put as much flesh on the bones of their proposals as they can -- because nothing attracts builders like something that's already half built.

As it stands, my fear is that your site just doesn't have enough _words_. Whitespace looks clean and professional, but it doesn't tell me what the site is for, and it doesn't tell me what the individual projects are about.

EDIT: changed the link to the first essay to the one that I really wanted to cite. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't this be better built as a Facebook app? Just because users already have profiles there and won't need to signup for a new service. Just a thought.</comment>


Why is most intellectual work done for free? - <AUTHOR> Open source: beg for tips
Youtube content: Lotto
Startups: lotto
Blogs: lotto
Affiliate Sales: Lotto
Q/A sites: lotto <comment><USER2> Because there is no easy way to pay for it that competes with cash -yet.</comment>


Brian Harvey on Software Complexity - <AUTHOR> > The deal is, and this is kind of a secret so don't tell anybody, computer programming is like the easiest thing in the world that people get paid a lot of money for. Computer programming is so easy as long as the program that you're writing is small so it can all fit in your head at once, which is how it used to be in the old days, you know? because computers where small, I mean big physically but they were small in capacity so you could fit all your program in your head, and they haven't invented Windows yet which helps a lot.<p>> But today programs are big and complicated and what CS is about is control of complexity, so another way to call our field is "Complexity Engineering".<p>Transcript from Brian Harvey's Computer Science 61A - Lecture 2: functional programming 2, around minute 13:00 <comment><USER2> > _" Computer programming is so easy as long as the program that you're > writing is small so it can all fit in your head at once, which is how it > used to be in the old days..."_

Actually, a lot of what we learned about writing big programs, we learned in the "old days". For example, _The Mythical Man Month_ is about the design of the operating system for the IBM 360 in the 1960s. There were also plenty of big and complicated compilers (PL/I, Algol 68) written in the old days.

ARPANET, the precursor of the internet, was created in the 1960s. So was the software that ran the Apollo space missions. Remember the iconic photo of Margaret Hamilton standing next to the stack of printouts for the Apollo software that was as tall as she was?[1] Certainly too big for one programmer to keep in her head.

So the assumption that in the old days, all programs were small and fit entirely into peoples' heads isn't really true. Writing significant software systems back then was as much about control of complexity as it is today.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_en...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_\(software_engineer\)#/media/File:Margaret_Hamilton_- _restoration.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> URL to video [https://archive.org/details/ucberkeley_webcast_TTK2lZoWbPQ](https://archive.org/details/ucberkeley_webcast_TTK2lZoWbPQ)</comment>


A Bay Area Startup Tackling Consumer Product Reviews - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/3cd72eb5db6c

<comment><USER2> so is everyone else... really are there NO new ideas?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, well what do you think about a taco delivery truck that delivers ice cream instead of tacos directly to people's front doors?

<comment><USER2> I don't like ice cream that much... but taco trucks that deliver tacos that taste good.. ok

<comment><AUTHOR> I got it. Taco flavored ice cream.

<comment><USER2> yumm... now tell MS to fix their rfcomm...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter bot OCRs your pics - pow-tac https://twitter.com/alt_text_bot <comment><AUTHOR> Build with CloudSight.

"CloudSight is a simple web API. Send an HTTP request with your image and you'll receive a description of its contents."

Awesome. AnD the bot just proofs it works.</comment>


Forfeiting Partition Tolerance in Distributed Systems - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thislongrun.com/2015/07/Forfeit-Partition-Tolerance-Distributed-System-CAP-Theorem.html

<comment><USER2> I don't understand. When you run into partitions, you need to make a decision, risk being inconsistent or shut down. Ignoring the problem is just choosing inconsistency by default. You haven't actually gone CA.

<comment><AUTHOR> You could also shut down definitively, for example if the system is corrupted and cannot restart after a partition. There is no inconsistent history in this case, just complete unavailability (you could also claim being CP).

You can also be partly available and partly inconsistent (2PC with heuristic resolution). Here you're not AP nor CP.

Partition intolerance (CA) is a specification. It's saying any network partition is a serious issue for the system, and that may break one or more invariants (ex: atomicity in a sql database).

<comment><USER2> > You could also shut down definitively, for example if the system is > corrupted and cannot restart after a partition. There is no inconsistent > history in this case, just complete unavailability (you could also claim > being CP).

This is precisely CP.

> You can also be partly available and partly inconsistent (2PC with heuristic > resolution). Here you're not AP nor CP.

This is basically what the AP systems do, with various ways to manage inconsistency. Dynamo-style EC is but one.

> Partition intolerance (CA) is a specification. It's saying any network > partition is a serious issue for the system, and that may break one or more > invariants (ex: atomicity in a sql database).

If you can break C in the face of a partition, then you're not CA, are you?

CA is not meaningful. CAP is about choosing between availability and consistency in the face of partitions, which are essentially unavoidable in any non-trivial multi-node system. There are maybe some interesting things to say about latency, but I suspect there isn't much that hasn't been said.

Side note: Mike Stonebraker posited in 2010 that partitions on a network are rare. I'm not going to outright call him wrong, but for the purposes of someone building a distributed system to be run for others on a non-appliance, you're going to run into plenty of partition events on a LAN. VoltDB changed the way our product behaved in version 3.0 to aggressively kill nodes if there is any potential for split brains. We originally intended this feature for the cloud only, but too many users with their own hardware were hitting partitions in surprising configurations.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This is precisely CP.

Hum. I would prefer to call 'precisely CP' a system that shutdown one of the partition, not one that cannot restart after a partition. Even if formally you can use both (i.e. CP/AP)

> VoltDB changed the way our product behaved in version 3.0 to aggressively > kill nodes if there is any potential for split brains. We originally > intended this feature for the cloud only,

Quite interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Beginner's Guide to Google Plus Advertising Options - <AUTHOR> http://www.pagewiz.com/blog/ppc/google-plus-advertising

<comment><AUTHOR> Google's new +Post ads service is the latest addition to its engagement advertising options that are intended primarily to promote direct interaction with users.</comment>


Billionaire's Secret Buyout Formula: 110 Instructions and an Intelligence Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaires-secret-buyout-formula-110-instructions-and-an-intelligence-test-1531151197 <comment><USER2> This was interesting and it immediately made me retrieve a list of their companies so I can avoid applying there. PE owned companies are auto-exclude for me anyway, but these seem even more so.</comment>


Rich Kid, Poor Kid: For 30 Years, Baltimore Study Tracked Who Gets Ahead - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/07/335285098/rich-kid-poor-kid-for-30-years-baltimore-study-tracked-who-gets-ahead <comment><USER2> Not so surprising punchline:

> Just 33 children — out of nearly 800 — moved from the low-income to high- > income bracket. And a similarly small number born into low-income families > had college degrees by the time they turned 28.

What bothers me is not that the poor stay poor and the rich stay rich. That's pretty much the history of the world, and it's unlikely to change any time soon.[1] What bothers me is how people rationalize the very imperfect world we live in. A great example of this is how often people point to outliers in discussing the structural barriers holding back poor kids. It's not rational. Obviously the relevant question is the plight of those with median-ish determination and drive, born into different circumstances.

I've worked a little bit with inner city students, and what just kills me is meeting kids who are like 90th percentile of determination and drive. Not the 99.9th percentile kids that will go to Harvard on a free ride despite growing up in the ghetto, but the kids who are a notch below. Those kids are one wrong step away from never making it out of the ghetto. Their counter-parts, born into well-off families, on the other hand, have a great shot at ending up at the upper end of the income spectrum.

[1] One of the things that really messes with my brain is how hard I'm trying to make sure my daughter has an unfair advantage in life. Not just in terms of education, etc, but even in terms of expectations and aspirations. How do you tell your kid to work hard so they can be anything they want to be, when you your own circumstances belie that assertion?

<comment><USER3> Why exactly do you describe trying to best position your daughter for a happy, healthy, successful life as "unfair"? Is this what the world has come to, is this the degree of our guilt, that simply being a good parent and using money where possible to better their children is an "unfair" act worthy of shame?

Maybe something got lost in translation but your inclusion of this one word "unfair" depresses me.

<comment><USER2> Our goal is literally to try, through the expenditure of money, to make sure she gets more success per unit of her own effort and ambition than other children do. How is that anything other than unfair? I'm not ashamed of it, but that doesn't mean I need to pretend it's fair and just.

<comment><USER4> I see your point, but it is not a zero sum game. The goal is not to make sure she gets more success than other children, but to make sure she achieves a high degree of success.

<comment><USER5> Though we live in an age of economic acceleration, it is still to some degree a zero sum game. There are only so many good jobs and though the potential to create more of them seems infinite, in reality we know that the demand for a comfortable lifestyle still vastly outstrips supply.

<comment><USER6> The statement above is the very reason there aren't more of these good jobs. Seems a very defeatist attitude.

Start a business and employ some people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _They found that a child 's fate is in many ways fixed at birth — determined by family strength and the parents' financial status._

This is what is so frustrating about most of the debate in this country. Time and again it comes down to people arguing over laziness and people wanting to be _takers_. Until we realize the import of the above statement, we'll be trapped in a vicious cycle.

<comment><USER8> I always subscribed to my grandfather's words: be honest, work hard, do your best or don't do it at all. It's really paid off for me. I grew up as a child in government run project apartments in Texas. I was able to escape that and do well through hard work.

I notice those around me who fail, they tend to:

-Party instead of study

-abuse drugs and alcohol

-spend instead of save

-put themselves in situations that lead to bad outcomes

-surround themselves with others who are not uplifting nor motivating

-desire some level of drama

<comment><USER9> success = hard work * luck

0.0 < hard work < 1.0

0.0 < luck < inf

you should be proud of yourself, but not be so judgemental.... after all you were lucky enough to have a grandfather to serve as a good role model. I'm sure if you examined your life critically you'd find many other instances of luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> And by age 28, 41 percent of white men born into low-income families had criminal convictions, compared with 49 percent of the black men from similar backgrounds._

Both of those numbers are insanely high. Especially when you realize that in the modern era of online background checks, their future employment options practically drop to zero at that point. By 28 close to half of the men from low income families were essentially unhireable for the rest of their lives. How is that sustainable for a country as a whole?

<comment><USER11> You're operating under the assumption that men with criminal backgrounds can't get work. Unfortunately some people _do_ discriminate, but not everyone does. There are ways to combat this.

1) we learn that it is OK to hire people with previous criminal convictions 2) we change the prison system to successfully assimilate criminals back into society

Probably most importantly:

3) we change drug laws so that holding small amounts of certain drugs becomes a misdemeanor

<comment><USER12> I'd go further and say that holding small amounts of certain drugs becomes legal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting conversation, and an important one. Re-iterates the importance of family, or group action. In college I volunteered for Big Brothers and met a number of young men for whom the deck was stacked against them.

One of the interesting things that correlated with success but I've not seen any definitive studies on it was church membership for the family. The young men were primarily hispanic, first generation, and if their family went to church the church community often helped cushion incidents which were disasters in non-church goers. Mom has to go to the hospital, the kids are fending for themselves, with church membership came folks who could (and would) step in and help.

The other part that made a big impression on me was that we also got a large influx of Vietnamese refugees and one family in particular the father told me that he knew his children would be poor like him, but his grand children would not. He was taking a very long view on things which at the tender age of 19 I was left wondering "Am I just a stepping stone toward a more successful clan of kids?" That was sort of the model back then of each generation does better than the last, I've done better than my parents, but lately I haven't felt that this will hold for my kids generation.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The kids who got a better start — because their parents were married and working — ended up better off. Most of the poor kids from single-parent families stayed poor."

So we should be encouraging people to get married, stay married, and stay responsible enough to hold down a job if they are going to raise kids. Not a new idea at all, but that's cool to have a study to back it up.

<comment><USER15> No. [http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/confusing-cause- and...](http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/confusing-cause-and- effect.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One thing that I have observed and learned is money management "strategies" or "styles" vary between socioeconomic brackets.

E.g., tradespeople don't always futz with stocks; they don't have the appetite for risk and volatility that stocks introduce. Long-term investing tends to be not done (maybe 401(k) or an IRA is used). Some of that is due to a lack of discretionary income, some of that is just culture.

When you cross a certain barrier upwards, financial understanding of stocks and so forth increases, and money is leveraged to produce, e.g., use of index funds and their return on investment.

Moving downward in the socioeconomic classes and passing another another barrier, money saving becomes less common, and impulse purchases appear to become more common.

\---

Some of this is definitely familial: I never learned about investments growing up and had to self-teach. That has limited my total financial situation to date. I did, however, learn about self-control, discipline, and self-teaching, which has helped me move forward financially.

Another aspect is behavior expectations of the successful - How to comport and present yourself in a way that signals that you are a professional, capable and trustworthy individual? I feel comfortable saying that most anyone from a poor/blue-collar background and who has now made it into the white-collar ranks can join with me in saying that _that_ is a big deal. (n.b., I would totally pony up cash for a local course in So You've Made It Now Past The First Job, Now How Do You Act?)

<comment><USER17> > Some of that is due to a lack of discretionary income, some of that is just > culture.

What's interesting is that you'll find the same group of people often purchase weekly lottery tickets. Which, if added up over time might make a small, but solid stock portfolio.

<comment><USER18> It's easy to understand how a lottery ticket might make you rich and hard to understand how unlikely it is to do so.

Something close to the reverse of this is true with a portfolio of stocks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I firmly believe we are products of our upbringing. Here is my personal example.

One of my facebook friends is a D-1 college basketball from the 80s. Throughout the years, his updates were about running laps and shooting baskets with his two sons. He groomed them to become basketball players. And no one was surprised when the boys made the varsity team in high school.

Replace basketball with programming or financial success. Acquiring a skill is infinitely easier with access to role models.

<comment><USER20> >One of my facebook friends is a D-1 college basketball from the 80s.

Raising kids at all seems like a huge success for a basketball.

On topic, I agree - my parents were very frugal and it sure has rubbed off on me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Did I not understand something correctly here? At first the text says people don't get ahead by education and hard work, and then it lists examples of the (few, of course) example who did get ahead and all of them got ahead by hard work and education?

Of course most people don't get ahead. We are wired to keep the same level of things we know. If we want to study how to get ahead we must study those few who do get ahead, or at least analyze why the ones not getting ahead didn't get or take their chances.

Another point I want to discuss:

I grew up in a village where people also live on the lower social end. Only thanks to my mom I was able to get away from there (education and hard work). And I can say that it's not just all unfair to people who end up in the same low situation as their parents (drugs, alcohol, no job, single parents). In fact teachers, social workers, police officers, old people on the street, the super market cashier,... many people try to support them and give them chances. But many people simply don't take the chances. They can choose the math teacher helping them passing the exam in his spare time without pay (and where I come from teachers already work unpaid overtime in their normal jobs), and they can choose to sit all day at the bus stop, get drunk, use drugs, etc. Many simply choose the second option, because they don't know how to think long term. It's not all unfair just because poor people often stay poor.

Third point:

Assuming my observation is correct, then what can the government do? If people already get chances to work their way up, but they don't take it, what are the options? Force them to not take drugs? Force them to study 6 hours every day? We live in a free country. Hard to convince anybody that this might be a good decision. But if you let people have a free will, to some degree you must accept that people are very lazy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nobody chooses which family he/she is born into, and nobody ever will. Each of us is randomly awakened, empty and dumb, on this Earth into a specific family and community outside our choosing, with its own mentors and values. This group will fill us with thoughts for 18 years. So yes, it is unfair that some of us are awakened to find we are poor, without good mentors or educators, and will be hindered for the rest of our lives. Unless society embraces something akin to complete communism or a Brave New World, which to me sounds incredibly boring, this will always be the case. We can't completely solve this issue at an individual level. But the problem is not just an individual problem. The path from rags to riches rarely happens in one generation.

Consider the family as an institution that competes with other families for life's rewards. There are going to be differences in values between families with 10M and families with 10K. Each family will prioritize life's rewards differently, whether that be riches, a passionate vocation, strong relationships, travel and experience, etc. When looked at from the unit of the family, why would we not want to financially reward families that acquire riches more than those that don't? As long as we can maintain a balance, where an individual who so strongly wants to escape their birth family and make it on their own can do so, isn't this the right thing to do?

</comment><comment><USER23> The researchers found that more affluent white men in the study reported the highest frequency of drug abuse and binge drinking, yet they still had the most upward mobility.

"The extent of what we refer to as problem behavior is greatest among whites and less so among African-Americans," Alexander says. "Whites of advantaged background had the highest percentages who did all three of those things — that was binge drinking, any drug use and heavy drug use."

\-----

interesting

</comment><comment><USER17> Upward mobility is constantly on my mind. After I was 10, I grew up pretty poor and rural, at one point my family was homeless for a few months and living in a motel. Despite that unpromising beginning, I was able to work my ass off and get comfortably ahead. It's been a tremendous struggle, but I'd be a damn liar if I said I didn't receive help from people from time-to-time, opportunities that helped keep me on an upward path. But also being positioned to take advantage of those opportunities when they appeared was something I like to think was my own doing. _I_ went to school, _I_ worked 100+ hours a week, _I_ applied for better positions and better jobs and fought for pay raises.

My mother and father both came from large families and it's interesting how they and all my cousins have turned out.

On my father's side, it's pretty apparent that none of the siblings could really stand each other, over the decades they moved all over the country, away from each other, and into wildly different walks of life. They all independently did their own thing and usually ended up in some kind leadership position (foreman, shift manager, etc.) or ended up owning small businesses (with all the risks that entails which is how we ended up homeless). They all grew up in extreme poverty in the mid-west at the end of the great depression. Of them, only my father went to college. But they all became more or less successes if you define success as "able to cover your living expenses while saving some for later". None of them became wildly rich, but all of them share the trait of stubbornness and an unbelievable work ethic.

Their kids are all generally doing fine or reasonably successful. No multi- millionaires, but all productive members of society. I'm the first person from this side to get a Masters Degree, but there are a few other college educated folks on that side. Measured by my father's side, I'm a slightly above average, but otherwise typical story.

My mother's side is a mixed bag, my grandfather was some kind of salesman and for most of my mother's generation they grew up well fed and cared for. He was a "success" by my earlier definition. But severe mental illness later in life, combined with alcoholism eventually put an end to that and my mother's teenage years was basically a collection of episodes dealing with an increasingly wildly out of control father and a deteriorating home environment. One of my uncles eventually also succumbed to the same kind of madness that took my grandfather, but the rest more or less went on to lead normal lives. But I think, looking at their lives, lots of what they chose to do was a reaction to the home environment they grew up in. One uncle ran away and joined the Army, never to return home again. Another became a minister and married into money. One took a decent blue collar job, moved away from home and worked it until retirement. Later on, they all ended up moving back into the same region in a different state (except for the military man).

The kids are mostly a disaster. Rampant alcoholism, drug-use, abusive violent ex-husbands and more. Only one went to college and she dropped out of the work force as soon as she got married right after college. Most of my cousins on my Mother's side hang out together, and all of them party together. At 30, the next oldest cousin, who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, has spent his career setting up chairs in hotel ballrooms making slightly better than minimum wage when he works. He went to some community college classes at some point, but eventually spent too much time drunk or drugged out to complete more than a semester. His sister, also born into money, is even worse. At almost 30, she can barely hold down a job for longer than a couple weeks. Co- dependent behavior is a way of life and they all ultimately co-support each other's bad habits. I try to avoid most of my Mother's family at all costs. I stay awake at night terrified I'm suddenly going to start getting phone calls asking for money or a place to crash "for a few days" \-- because I know that will turn into a never ending drain on my family and our resources.

Measured by my mother's family I'm a wild success story - a single point of light in a dark pit of failure.

Ideally, you'd think that my mother's family, with the close family links and the availability of money through one of my uncles would have set them all up. My cousin's parents were all "success" in terms of supporting their families, but yet most of my cousins are objectively life failures.

I have people closer than my family in my life, old friends I grew up with. All of us being poor, _most_ of them did not become successes, but it doesn't seem to me that in any case it was as a result of their parents doing more or less for them, but about their own consistently poor life choices. Ones with obvious negative outcomes, but chosen because they provided immediate positive emotional return. In other words, their decision flow chart tests if a choice feels good or not, not if it provides them with a successful outcome. Looking at my mother's family, their co-dependence and substance abuse issues, it appear they're using the same decision making process. One of my drug addled cousins suddenly deciding to stop using drugs, and move away from his group of co-dependent family and friends, and get a decent job, would be a fantastic change in behavior that I'm not aware ever happens with any frequency in reality.

It's obvious that becoming successful is complex, but I think parent's financial status is more of a correlation than a causation for future success (even though it might designate a probabilistic cap for how successful a person can become). It seems that good parenting combined with a natural desire to succeed is what happens. But when somebody doesn't have a desire to succeed, it's likely they also won't be good parents. Children pattern after their parents and also inherit the same lack of desire, from both behavior and genetic factors. Nobody has really figured out how to change that central decision point from "does it feel good" to "does it make me successful" with any sort of reliability. It seems to have to come from inside the person somewhere.

<comment><USER24> Delayed gratification never gets talked about enough. It is the heart of capitalism. It's also, without a doubt, the most important contributor to success.

But, I don't think it's fair to say it has to come from inside the person somewhere. Obviously, you're right in the literal sense, as you can't impose delayed gratification on a free adult. But, that doesn't mean its inherent in someone's genetics. I think the far more likely reality is that people learn delayed gratification by watching those around them. Even if you do have some preternatural foresight as a child, it's extremely difficult to see how delayed gratification makes you successful in life if you never see anyone that's successful due to their practice of delaying gratification.

This cuts across wide social divides as well. I grew up in a wealthy family, in a wealthy suburb and had wealthy friends. Everyone had wildly successful parents. Guess which kids ended up losers (and there are a lot of them)? The ones whose parents were too busy with their careers and placated their guilt by trying to buy their children's happiness. These were the kids who got everything they wanted, any time. These were also the first kids to smoke, try drugs, have sex, and play video games instead of do homework or go to football practice. Now these people are working minimum wage jobs, if they're working at all. The few who used their family connections to get into sales gigs, or similar, are generally broke. They make a little bit of money, then blow it all in a weekend.

I can only imagine how this effect is amplified growing up in the lower socio- economic classes. My friends at least knew people that became successful, and saw that it was possible. I'm sure it's easy to think that improving your life is impossible if you'd never met anyone who did it, or if your parents, family, and friends were impoverished, or alcoholics, or drug addicts.

<comment><USER17> Yeah good points all. I say this as somebody who generally is supportive of various kinds of welfare programs, because I've seen how they _can_ be actual safety nets for people in trouble. I think these programs don't address this point at all, and don't really want to face it.

There's a kind of mythology in welfare advocacy circles, that people just need to have that safety net, and some sort of kernel of desire will bounce them right back out of it. I know that's true for some people, but there really are quite a lot of people for which it isn't. And addressing this is a tremendous social problem. The problem in my eyes is that advocacy circles don't want to recognize this and thus haven't really done any real work in addressing.

On the other hand addressing it might also undermine most of modern consumer culture which is a fundamental driver of modern capitalism.

This might translate into a general lack of research dollars and interest into actually solving this problem on the low success end of the bell-curve.

<comment><USER25> I think you neglect to consider that not all people are success-minded, that some, even given all the good influence and knowledge and skills, would rather not use that to pursue things that are usually defined as success--except for the very very few who make it as cultural big names.

These people are usually artists, intellectuals and researchers and their priorities are a far cry from money (and sometimes stability.) Some good decades ago they could get by with a variety of part-time jobs and work on what they believe on the side, and live their whole lives this way and be happy (even by the process of life itself, as opposed to goals and results.) Nowadays that's getting much harder to do of course, and people with this mindset are struggling to make ends meet, let alone live in a bustling city. Add to that student debts and all that--I think it's no wonder quality cultural production has somewhat declined in the views of many, especially in comparison to the 50s, or the 70s. New York used to have a bunch of these people, and it allowed artistical serendipity to take place easily, so dense were their ranks. Nowadays living there, for these people, is no option unless you can live with well-off parents.

These kinds of people might be labeled the cultural elite, and historically they have created most of our art, either through making ends meet somehow (which was more possible) or being supported by patrons or parents--hence why I think 'cultural elite' is befitting, they're supported by an elite who tends to be success-minded or power-hungry (or rent-seeking, which used to be way more prevalent), but they themselves are not.

They're somewhat carefree people, the saner of whom also do not need a lot to live on and don't want to raise a family, so those could conceivably live off basic income. I think that would be good for society, because the success- minded people who naturally come to control decision-making and run things around don't seem to care much (or don't grok) that there's this other side of mankind who don't quite fit in what they build. At least culturally these people still get a say, they do shape culture after all, but I'm afraid that's gonna be less and less so, at least when it comes to the masses. The internet helps give them voice, sure, but when those who are like this and have a cosmopolitan view can't afford a like-minded city, we lose scenes and movements and all these beautiful artistic expressions of a time and place and group of people.

In the field of software development, of course, there are many, who usually devote their lives to open source or learning materials and don't really mind not having money (except when it starts pressing hard.) Richard Stallman could well be considered a great example who went on to make amazing contributions for our collective good, and his patron was the US Military. Alas, research budgets are being cut and cut, especially long-term research without sure profitability, and universities are on their way to bankrupcy, and times like that don't look like they're coming back again.

<comment><USER17> Well, I did broadly define success as "able to cover your living expenses while saving some for later".

As a former wanna be professional violinist, I definitely don't think becoming a billionaire is the only mark of success. But I also think that if you can't cover your basic living expenses no matter how modestly you've sized them you're doing it wrong.

Outside of that narrow definition, I'd encourage everybody to do whatever it is they wish to do and gives them fulfillment.

I knew a guy who quite a mid six-figure job to open a Tae Kwon Do school because he enjoyed the art and liked teaching people better than what he was doing. He didn't make much money, sold his house to buy the school and lived in the back of his school for a few years, but he always made rent, paid his bills and didn't miss a meal.

I think that's cool. He did what he wanted to and didn't fall into some kind of sense of entitlement that he should be taken care of by other people because he was pursuing his passion.

I have another friend who graduated with a degree in digital media right at the top of the 90s .com boom, when people were throwing wheelbarrows of money at anybody who could operate a keyboard, and turned it all down to go play guitar in Irish folk bands. He made enough to rent a basement apartment and feed and clothe himself, and got to see lots of the world going on tour. That's fantastic and I love that he got to follow his desire. He still does a version of this, but now he's a also a professional staff guitarist for a major guitar maker and does professional guitar soundtracks for commercials. That's awesome to me.

I totally think of these people as successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish we could find a more comprehensive measure of "class" than income, because I think this broader measure has a much larger effect than income itself.

Technically speaking, you'd put me in the mobile group. Growing up, my parents never earned more than median wage and were consistently in the bottom third of the income bracket. Thankfully, I've been lucky enough to leap into the top 5%. I'll be buying my dad his first house soon.

Yet, I've never felt particularly mobile. My parents were both college- educated, and my aunts/uncles are decidedly (upper) middle class. It was always expected that I'd go to college and succeed in careers. By this measure, I haven't moved at all.

</comment><comment><USER27> I would like to see a study that follows the kids of poor immigrants. Almost everyone I know who came from poor immigrant families, including my own and my wife's, is doing well. We're all middle to upper middle class now. In fact, my family and relatives were so poor, they literally came to American with zero money. My wife's dad came here with only $50 to his name.

It would be interesting to see some statistics on that.

</comment><comment><USER28> Rich doesn't always mean squat, culture can sink you more and most likely does even in the Baltimore study.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/arts/why-are-black- student...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/arts/why-are-black-students- lagging.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Ironically, one of the books that shaped my ideas on topics like this early on was the fictional _' The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism' by Emmanuel Goldstein_ in ' _1984._ ' Orwell's perspective as a dissident socialist is very unique and made for a lot of nuance. This is one of the places where it shines through, in my opinion.

In any case, in 1984-world there is an exam for moving the most talented of the middle classes into the upper class and least talented of the upper class to the middle. I think Orwell's thinking here was a 'keep the dangerous ones on the inside" strategy. But, I think there's another mechanism at work. Release valves and the creation of ambiguity.

A member of the underclass with undeniable talent and force of will is very dangerous to the order of things. If there are several of them pushing hard against a glass ceiling then pressure builds up. It also becomes very obvious the the ceiling exists. That's where Malcolm Xs come from.

Malcolm X recalls in his autobiography about an incident where he told his teacher he wanted to become a lawyer. The teacher responds that this is "not a realistic goal for a nigger". If he had become a lawyer he might have become one of the (as he saw it) one of those despicable, integration seeking middle class negroes. Blue pills.

Hitting a hard ceiling made the existence of the ceiling undeniable and the incredible force of his personality had no other outlet than pushing against this impenetrable ceiling.

I don't know if how obvious it was at the time that Malcolm X had the potential in him that he obviously exhibited as an adult. But let's imagine that the 12 year old Malcolm X was a 12 year old version of the 35 year old Malcolm X. A system that embraces that kid, makes him a lawyer. Gives him an outlet whiten it and celebrates him as an example of crossing class barriers or even proof for the non existence of those barriers is a more robust system.

BTW, I think it's wrong to read 1984 as a description of a conspiracy. The conspiracy is more of a metaphor, a way of easily explaining how things work. In reality, societies are memoplexes, evolved. To paraphrase Douglas Adams. "A memoplex that survives is a memoplex that survives." They are made up of surviving memes. Memes preventing class movement entirely are likely to bring down the memoplex. I think airtight class distinctions (such as a system of race based slavery) are fundamentally unstable for this reason.

There are interesting datapoints in accounts of ancient slavery. The Hebrew Bible describes a system of slavery with ways out existing in the ancient Middle east. Earning freedom. Sabbatical amnesties. Jacob came to Egypt as a slave. He rose to become a sort of chancellor to the Pharaoh. Ancient Greek & Roman systems of slavery had ways for exceptional slaves to earn freedom or even rise in rank within the institution of slavery. If Spatacus' leadership abilities had caused him to be ejected from slavery, his uprising would never have happened. He might have been a general enslaving barbarians and contributing gainfully to the system.

</comment><comment><USER30> I will summarize real quick. "Rich" and "Poor" are 2 variable of millions - And no matter how many variables you address you cannot escape one simple fact about "who gets ahead" \- "If its important to you, you will find a way, if it is not, you will find an excuse."

<comment><USER31> > no matter how many variables you address you cannot escape one simple fact > about "who gets ahead" \- "If its important to you, you will find a way, if > it is not, you will find an excuse."

Do you have evidence for that? All the evidence I read, including the research discussed in this HN post, says that it depends heavily on where you start, including factors such as family income.

Are you saying that children born into poor families or who face other such disadvantages achieve less because they have less willpower than children born into wealthier families? If so, perhaps we should look at the relationship between family income and willpower.

EDIT: Minor clarification</comment></comment>