Algernon's Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.gwern.net/Drug%20heuristics?2 <comment><USER3> Gwern, this whole subject is sloppy. It is trivially simple to improve IQ scores by practicing the types of questions IQ tests make. There is no reliable way to measure IQ, therefore it's not clear that IQ is measuring anything reliably. What, _exactly_ , are you talking about then?

<comment><USER4> I improved my IQ by 20 pts in an year's time. It was pretty simple: study SAT/GRE words, and do a lot of arithmetic exercises.

I know that it increased by 20 pts. because I underwent an IQ test conducted by a licensed psychologist twice.

<comment><USER5> it was always my understanding that "good" IQ tests should have almost zero variance based on your vocabulary, or hell, even your mathematical abilities. A "good" IQ test simply tests your logic facilities.

Example "good" questions would show a sequence of 6 shapes and ask you what the next one in the series should look like. or perhaps a question like "given that all boogles are quinks and some quinks are flets, are all flets boogles?".

A question on a "bullshit" IQ test would be: "'Daring' is an appropriate adjective for: A. Rocks. B. Planets. C. Humans.". Another would be "x^2 = 36, solve for x"

Now, I know that some standardized tests (ACT, SAT, IBTS), will sometimes try to estimate your IQ by correlating your scores, but that is fraught with problems and shouldn't be taken as gospel.

<comment><USER6> > A "good" IQ test simply tests your logic facilities.

You can dramatically improve your logic facilities by taking a course in logic. Your boogles, quinks, and flets question is trivial if you know even rudimentary set theory.

<comment><USER7> Not even that - it's the kind of question that becomes dramatically easier to answer if you know how to trick your brain into thinking it's easy. "Given that all cats are animals and some animals are mice, are all mice cats?"

<comment><USER6> It's actually a harder question if you phrase it with cats, animals, and mice! The correct answer is "possibly" (either yes or no), but the cats, animals, and mice question predisposes you to answer with "no".

<comment><USER7> For me, that kind of comes under the category of "know how to answer the question": that is, "remember that you have produced an example, which does not constitute proof but merely evidence". You're right that it's still not easy to distinguish between "definitely yes" and "not {definitely no}", though I do still find it easier with nouns-which-I-know than made-up-words, I think. I should have put in an attempt to make the statement true - maybe "Given that all cats are cats, and some cats are cats, are all cats cats?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He talks about MDMA and how it reduces anxiety near the end. When I first tried it, I found it quite amazing how a pill could completely eliminate my social anxiety for a few hours. I'd _never_ felt so comfortable in my own skin and surrounding environment. I'd never realized that at every waking moment, even when alone, even when I think I'm pretty relaxed, I always feel some amount of background anxiety. This drug was able to take the anxiety down to zero. I was no longer afraid to go talk to strangers, I could really have fun at parties.

The downsides, though, are pretty obvious. For one, MDMA causes a crash. Sometimes, I'd be down for 2, even 3 days afterwards, which would be quite unpleasant and kill my productivity. Another thing is that well, anxiety and fear are sometimes useful. If you're too trusting of people around you, you might eventually get yourself in risky situations. You might trust people you really shouldn't.

There's also been a study on MDMA that showed that it changes the way you interpret signs of rejection given off by people. You interpret people's response to you more positively, even if it isn't all that positive. MDMA can help you approach people, but it can also make you a little delusional (over optimistic) about the way people perceive you.

My personal opinion is that people with less baseline anxiety are probably still generally better off in the modern world. They're less stressed, they're more open to approaching and being approached by people, they end up having more friends because of this. They might have a tendency to be more trusting and not notice as much when they annoy people, but it probably generally works in their favor. I probably worry too much about displeasing other people.

<comment><USER9> MDMA sounds to humans what Toxoplasma gondii infection is to rats.

<comment><USER8> With the difference that you're presumably much more intelligent than a rat. Even if you don't feel anxious, you _can_ reason on a purely logical basis as to what might be a bad idea. Even if you stopped feeling fear, you'd probably still be intelligent enough to look on both sides before crossing the street. I do agree that it can, and probably will increase risk taking, though. The risks I took on MDMA were social risks, things I don't actually deem to be dangerous, things my fear stops me from doing but that I should probably be attempting more often.

I find that MDMA makes it very easy to "open up" to people and tell them what you think. This is probably one of the reasons why people are looking into using it as a therapeutic aid for PTSD and rape victims. In the context of a party though, this can translate in you being very comfortable telling your friends what you really think about them, even if it isn't a good idea. I found I'm still able to ask myself rationally "is this something I should be telling this person?", "could this be hurtful to this person?" and stop myself from saying stupid things. This is different from alcohol, which makes you both less anxious and less intelligent. I can tell you that on MDMA, I actually feel extremely sharp, more than normal (better recall, better verbal fluency, etc).

I can tell you that people have said stupid and offensive things to me while high on MDMA, however. One girl told me that she disliked my new hairstyle (thanks, I like it just fine), and also told me that she frequently had sex dreams about me, but that nothing could come of it since she had a boyfriend. Both of these were things I didn't want to know. I will say though that this same girl has said more offensive and annoying things to me while sober.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how many people thoroughly read these gwern articles before jumping to comment their opposing views. There is a lot of information inside. It may take me 5-6 hours to properly go through it before concluding that gwern didnt take X into account. Idea : On HN, even if I save long articles for later and read a week after, my posted views will not be read by anyone since the discussion is already over. Maybe HN can provide a service where everyone gets update whenever a new comment is posted on such articles. I get to choose which posts I want updates from(and most will be ones having lots of words since updates will be few and far between). That way even if someone comments after a week, she atleast knows few people are getting aware of it.

<comment><USER11> I wish there was a service like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems to me a flaw in this argument is that much smarter humans do show up from time to time, without apparent ill effect. It's conceivable that we could at least enhance intelligence to John von Neumann's level.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's conceivable, but it's not going to be easy or _simple_. Think of how many billions of humans existed simultaneously with John von Neumann without being anywhere near his level. If we figure that Neumann was mostly due to a stellar combination of alleles, then that implies he got lucky on a very large number of alleles (imagine a bunch of alleles which can be on or off, and Neumann got all of them 'on'; then because he was 1 out of 5 billion or whatever, he got log_2 5,000,000,000 = 32. This is not 1 variation, which is easy to select on, or 2, but 32. The current state of the art, using n=100,000 is around 3 SNPs. (I apologize in advance to the geneticists for my reasoning here.))

And I would note that Neumann, despite being happily married, a gifted negotiator, lady's man, and party-goer, never had children.

So Neumann might violate either the simple or reproductive fitness requirements: to the extent we can hope to manufacture Neumanns through genetic engineering, it's not going to be easy; and to the extent we can judge from n=1, the reproductive fitness penalties may be large.

<comment><USER13> fyi, [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_von_Neumann_Whitman](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_von_Neumann_Whitman)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. My bad. I guess I was thinking of his second marriage and didn't remember he had a daughter. But I see she only has 2 kids, so maybe it will still be true soon that von Neumann was without any surviving descendants...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _If the proposed intervention would result in an enhancement, why have we not already evolved to be that way?_

This is completely misguided, because evolution does not necessarily "progress" in any sense. Here is a good explanation:

[http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq....](http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a3)

This looks like a typical example of what happens when people from mathematical fields or philosophers take up evolution and A) view it as some sort of simple optimization procedure and B) use it as some all-pervading philosophical principle from which things can be derived and don't have to be proven.

<comment><USER15> I think that the author covered most of the same objections in his essay that the FAQ you link does, missing only that evolution doesn't necessarily work well in small populations.

<comment><USER14> He nevertheless proceeds as if this is something that is generally true, with it only being false in exceptional situations. There is no reason to suppose that this is generally true, which makes the heuristic useless, and hence his reasoning gets very shaky, for example:

 _How about opiates? Morphine and other painkillers can easily be justified as evolution not knowing when a knife cut is by a murderous enemy and when it's by a kindly surgeon (which didn't exist way back when), and choosing to make us err on the side of always feeling pain. But recreational drug abuse?

#1 doesn't seem too plausible - what about modern society would favor opiate consumption outside of medicinal use? If one wishes to deaden the despair and ennui of living in a degenerate atheistic material culture, we have beer for that.57

#3 doesn't work either; opioids have been around for ages and work via the standard brain machinery.

#2 might work here as well, but this dumps us straight into the debate about the War on Drugs and what harm drug use does to the user & society._

He completely misses here what he wrote himself earlier for example about there not existing a simple mutation from the current state to the "desired" one.

<comment><USER16> There is reason to believe that it's true except in exceptional situations, and this is covered in the article:

 _Theoretical calculations apparently indicate that in a changing environment, the fitness gap between the current allele and its alternatives will be small and large gaps exponentially rare19; this is as one would expect from the market analogue (the bigger the arbitrage, the faster it will be exploited)._

<comment><USER14> I understand this research to say: if there exists a simple mutation that is hugely beneficial, it will spread fast. This does not mean every beneficial change to the DNA we as intelligent beings can come up with can be expected to have most likely already happened in the course of evolution. The article acknowledges this at one point, but some of the further discussion in uninformed by this issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Previous discussion (of an earlier version of this article?) 461 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4201233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4201233)

Readers who are interested in following up on the professional literature on human intelligence and IQ testing are invited to dig into the "Intelligence Citations" bibliography

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

in Wikipedia user space.

</comment><comment><USER18> I haven't read the whole article, but there is at least one inaccuracy I spotted. Piracetam's primary mechanism of action is glutamatergic, not cholinergic. This is why the known side-effects include anxiety, headaches, insomnia or irritability. The cholinergic impact is less pronounced.

<comment><USER19> Citation?

<comment><USER18> I don't have much time right now to sift through so many papers, but see these for instance:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10583700](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10583700) , [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1372342](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1372342)

I haven't stated anything outrageous, it's been known for a long time that piracetam is a positive modulator of glutamate receptors.

<comment><USER19> I'm not disputing that. But I've read a ton of studies about piracetam, and I've always had the impression that its _primary_ mechanism was cholinergic.

<comment><USER18> It largely depends on what you've read: how reputable the journal, how well- informed and genuine the researchers were etc. Some papers are written just for the sake of making one researcher's 'quota' or fulfilling the minimal requirements for a grant. It's not unusual even in the research community to keep rehashing old information.

<comment><AUTHOR> I too was distinctly under the impression that piracetam's mechanism was cholinergic and other mechanisms were bit players; Wikipedia likewise gives that impression: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam#Mechanisms_of_action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam#Mechanisms_of_action)

<comment><USER18> I always take Wikipedia with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to pharmacology / pharmacodynamics / pharmacokinetics. I may be wrong though, so take my opinions with a grain of salt as well please.

Here's another way of looking at the issue though.

For instance, an example of the symptoms a cholinergic overdose would cause ('bradycardia, sinus arrhythmia, vomiting and respiratory insufficiency'), as opposed to piracetam's most common side-effects listed on Wikipedia ('anxiety, insomnia, irritability, headache, agitation, nervousness, and tremor'): [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14658400](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14658400)

Although not listed on Wikipedia, sinus tachycardia is another potential side- effect of piracetam, perhaps more common than bradycardia. Unfortunately I can't find where I put my Thomson Micromedex toxicology leaflets on piracetam, I'd look up more info.

Btw, I hope I haven't offended you, it's clear you put a lot of work into the article and are passionate about the subject. I'm off to sleep, have an awesome day wherever you are.

<comment><AUTHOR> So... the evidence for your claim was that some of the side-effects sound similar?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To me, a related supposition is more interesting: if you put a human in an environment which minics closely their recent evolutionary history, will previously-missing environmental triggers boost intelligence (or any other bodily function?) to their optimum, perhaps via hormesis? Such an environment would include:

\- higher amounts of exercise \- periodic fasting and/or malnutrition \- lower carb intake (sugars, grains) \- higher plant intake \- higher sunlight exposure \- sleep/wake cycle dictated by the Sun \- less sitting

... but might also include:

\- exposure to rotted food and disease \- increased bodily injury \- increased exposure to the elements

</comment><comment><USER21> The article opens with a claim that (i) an individual's brain is wired in a way which makes _change in IQ_ difficult for a set of healthy humans with IQ over a certain threshold which is basically orthogonal to the main thrust of the article (ii) that _higher [potential] IQ has an evolutionary disadvantage_ Sure, one can posit that (i) occurs because of (ii): i.e. (iii) to mitigate against the risk of people harming their reproductive ability by training up their IQ, _the evolutionary process selects for immutable IQ_

But that seems like a hypothesis with little to recommend it against the alternate hypothesis that mutability of IQ is neutral with respect to evolution but _evolving brain structures whose performance in certain tasks can be radically improved in adulthood is difficult, period_. Especially when one considers that high IQ at birth isn't eliminated from the gene pool, and marked increases in 1930-normalised IQ between generations doesn't appear to markedly disadvantage modern Westerners.

Similarly, it seems simpler to accept that the phenotype "potential 140 IQ" is the consequence of specific, rare combinations of certain genes which overall aren't correlated with survival, without positing side effects of IQ-linked genes. Ubermensch can't be bred because their kids aren't clones rather than because they're necessarily deficient in other ways.

I'd see the incidence of Tay Sachs disease as a _counterexample_ to the theory that high performance in a specific brain function necessarily has evolutionary tradeoffs. Ashkenazi Jews on average test with higher verbal and mathematical intelligence and lower spatial intelligence than other ethnic groups, which could imply that human brains naturally-selected for optimal function in one area are punished in other areas. Ashkenazi Jews are also more likely to carry the recessive gene for the very rare and very debilitating Tay-Sachs disease. But since 26 out of 27 Ashkenazi Jews don't have that recessive gene, which afaik is uncorrelated with IQ amongst Ashkenazi Jews, it suggests the common factor between Askhenazi intelligence and Ashkenazi Tay- Sachs incidence is inbreeding. Reduced average spatial intelligence could, like Tay-Sachs, be the unfortunate effect of a restricted gene pool rather than an "tradeoff" which must inevitably be caused by higher scores in other tests.

<comment><USER22> > alternate hypothesis that mutability of IQ is neutral with respect to > evolution but evolving brain structures whose performance in certain tasks > can be radically improved in adulthood is difficult, period.

Merely 'difficult' is not much of a counter-argument - almost every component of a human being is at least 'difficult' to design. There doesn't seem to be reason to believe creating higher intelligence is _especially_ more costly, in comparison to the already achieved intelligence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > it's not too surprising that human medicine may be largely wasted effort or > harmful 13 (although most - especially doctors - would strenuously deny > this).

This claim requires evidence, but the citation is to a blog post about nutrition, not medicine.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This claim requires evidence, but the citation is to a blog post about > nutrition, not medicine.

I didn't realize nutrition had nothing to do with medicine. And _actually_ , the citation is to a list of 24 posts by Hanson covering various aspects of the negative case for medicine, including but not limited to nutrition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been collecting examples of the abuse and misunderstanding of the no- free-lunch theorems, and this is a pretty flagrant one:

> "Any simple major enhancement to human intelligence is a net evolutionary > disadvantage." The lesson is that Mother Nature know best. Or alternately, > TANSTAAFL: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

<comment><USER25> Why do you think that is wrong?

<comment><USER24> The NFL theorem (for search and optimisation) states that all algorithms for searching a fixed problem space perform the same, in expectation, when you don't know anything about the fitness (cost) structure over that space. There is a tradeoff in a sense: an algorithm can only do better than random search on some instances of the problem if it does worse on others. There's no sense of a tradeoff between multiple objectives on a single instance of a search problem, which is what gwern is talking about.

<comment><USER25> I believe it's actually a reference to the general expression "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" and has little to do with the computer science theorem of a similar name.

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch))

<comment><USER24> Yes, but Gwern links to the wiki page on the NFL theorems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Intelligence is not an unalloyed good as the article claims. An excess of intelligence without some outlet for it produces frustration and, in extreme cases, depression.

<comment><USER22> So it has a cost, exactly as the article claims?

The very _point_ of the article is that there is no free lunch. Intelligence improvements are bound to be trade-offs, because otherwise they'd have evolved already. Frustration and depression may be some of these costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Another day, another gwern.net post.

<comment><USER28> Not a fan?

<comment><USER27> It's not that I am not a fan, but it's just strange that we've been seeing so many posts from gwern.net, considering he's been writing for many years. This article, for example, is from 2010.

<comment><USER29> He explained why he's submitting so many nine days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6466422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6466422). He constanly updates and expands the articles on his website, so it isn't so strange for an article created in 2010 to be posted now. This post, for example, was last modified today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I find the overall argument to be rather weak. The most relevant problem is that it starts on a premise that might as well be this: "Intelligence is a substance, and a nootropic is a drug that makes the brain produce more of it."

Of course I've intentionally phrased this as to make it seem ludicrous, but throughout the article he talks of "more" or "less" intelligence as though it were a fungible sort of thing. Really, though, intelligence is just a way that human beings interpret each other's behavior, related to performance on various tasks (mathematics, etc). There's no particular reason to assume that evolution would have optimized for, e.g., skill in mathematical analysis, and therefore there isn't any particular reason to assume that even the silliest of low-hanging fruit wouldn't have been picked, for instance an elderly and distinguished analyst, such as Paul Erdos, may benefit from taking amphetamine.

There are also radical differences in what we measure as "IQ", which is mostly performance on a battery of strange tasks, and the sort of mental performance that leads to evolutionary success. There are, for example, arguments to the evolutionary sufficiency of ADHD[1], OCD[2].

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis)

2: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocd#Causes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocd#Causes)

More critically, though, is that this represents yet another article on the basis of "I-think-it-oughta" evolutionary reasoning. You think "intellectual low-hanging fruit" ought to be selected for, but you don't have empirical evidence. The claim is based almost entirely on hand-waving and citations of Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is not in any case an authoritative source [3], and whose claims have not been in general accepted by contemporary neuroscientists [4].

3: [http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.se/2010/09/eliezer- yudkow...](http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.se/2010/09/eliezer-yudkowsky-on- bayes-and-science.html)

4: notably absent here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence and here: [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=evolution+intelligence+a...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=evolution+intelligence+algernon&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C11)

Meanwhile, experimental evidence is contradicted. For instance, amphetamine _is_ correlated with improvements in IQ, not to the tune of 20 points, more like four[5]. In fact, things as random -- and ostensibly detrimental -- as _mescaline_ [6] can improve certain aspects of mental functioning, albeit at the cost of others. That what are essentially shots in the dark can produce noticeable improvements in certain qualities bodes well for rational drug design, which has been a success in other fields e.g. cisplatin vs. imatinib.

5: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine#Medical](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine#Medical)

6: [http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Addictions/2070](http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Addictions/2070)

Another thing that is important to keep in mind is that the workings of the body can be _highly_ counterintuitive. For instance, one might expect choline supplementation to increase the level of brain acetylcholine. It seems natural, right? But it's not true[7]. Furthermore, while piracetam's effects are commonly considered to be affected (and side-effects reduced) by choline supplementation[8], it is now generally believed to act primarily as an allosteric modulator on ion channels linked to AMPA-sensitive glutamate receptors[9]. Facile reasoning of the sort "what negative effects might have prevented evolution from doing this" thus cannot, itself, tell us very much.

7: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mrm.1910390619/fu...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mrm.1910390619/full)

8: popular claim on longecity et al, e.g.: [http://www.pillscout.com/2013/06/17/your-piracetam-dosage- is...](http://www.pillscout.com/2013/06/17/your-piracetam-dosage-is- wrong/#comment-36) , [http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/181563-any-piracetam- user...](http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/181563-any-piracetam-users-out- there)

9: [http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jm901905j](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jm901905j)

The most immediately difficult claim to me is the advocacy of spaced repetition, when it is not clear why the claims of the article necessarily apply to drugs but not to techniques such as this -- could we not evolve to use it instinctively?

For all this, there is a little useful data in the article. It is indeed widely suspected that choline is underrepresented in modern diets[10], possibly because major dietary sources of choline include eggs and fatty meats, which have been discouraged in Western diets due to a now-controversial belief that cholesterol and saturated fats are antinutrients. There are indeed large differences between WEIRD[11] and historical environments, many of which go without mention -- socializing is much easier, our lives demand much less energy, the risk of malnutrition has been all but eliminated, etc.

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

11: [http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jvt002/BrainMind/Readings/H...](http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jvt002/BrainMind/Readings/Henrich_2010.pdf)

The general thrust of my post is that "evolution" is not an argument that computer scientists can throw around in order to do biology without actually studying it[12], and that evolutionary psychology is often subject to epistemological problems, cf. _The Emperor 's New Paradigm_[13].

12: [http://www.amazon.com/Behavioral-Genetics-Robert- Plomin/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Behavioral-Genetics-Robert- Plomin/dp/1429205776)

13: [http://commons.lib.niu.edu/bitstream/10843/13182/1/BullerTiC...](http://commons.lib.niu.edu/bitstream/10843/13182/1/BullerTiCS%20Reprint.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> > I find the overall argument to be rather weak. The most relevant problem is > that it starts on a premise that might as well be this: "Intelligence is a > substance, and a nootropic is a drug that makes the brain produce more of > it."

Which of course it is not. Some supplements work on a deficiency principle, but many do not.

> Of course I've intentionally phrased this as to make it seem ludicrous, but > throughout the article he talks of "more" or "less" intelligence as though > it were a fungible sort of thing.

Performance is a measurable thing. It is measured all the time. There didn't have to be a positive manifold to cognitive performance, we could live in a world where there are two kinds of mental performance which are zero-sum - <USER2> nevertheless, there is a _g_.

> There's no particular reason to assume that evolution would have optimized > for, e.g., skill in mathematical analysis, and therefore there isn't any > particular reason to assume that even the silliest of low-hanging fruit > wouldn't have been picked, for instance an elderly and distinguished > analyst, such as Paul Erdos, may benefit from taking amphetamine.

Of course there's no reason to expect evolution to optimize human intelligence for humans' culturally-based and idiosyncratic desires. It optimizes for reproductive fitness. Hence if we optimize ourselves for our own desires, we are probably incurring a fitness cost, and satisfying one of the loopholes.

(I swear, I am amazed at how every time this essay shows up somewhere, I can reliably count on someone to take one of the loopholes - and no matter how repeatedly, clearly, explicitly, in bulleted or enumerated lists, I have stated them - someone will proudly take a loophole and offer it as a refutation: 'ah, what if we optimize thousands of genes simultaneously? ah, what if nature optimizes for reproduction and not our desires? ah, what about the latest self-improvement fad like dual n-back which might add an IQ point or two?')

> There are also radical differences in what we measure as "IQ", which is > mostly performance on a battery of strange tasks, and the sort of mental > performance that leads to evolutionary success. There are, for example, > arguments to the evolutionary sufficiency of ADHD[1], OCD[2]. > > 1: > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_vs._farmer_hypothesis) > > 2: > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocd#Causes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocd#Causes)

Those are cute examples, I'll borrow those.

> More critically, though, is that this represents yet another article on the > basis of "I-think-it-oughta" evolutionary reasoning.

No, it follows from straightforward reasoning about natural selection. How could intelligence be selected for if it does not have a fitness advantage? If it has a fitness advantage, why has it not reached fixation? And so on.

> You think "intellectual low-hanging fruit" ought to be selected for, but you > don't have empirical evidence. The claim is based almost entirely on hand- > waving and citations of Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is not in any case an > authoritative source [3], and whose claims have not been in general accepted > by contemporary neuroscientists [4].

You are badly mistaken here. I am not citing Yudkowsky because his authority 'makes it so', and it's interesting that you immediately jump to thinking that. I quote him because he formulated the idea well, and I think in some respects better than Bostrom's later paper, and his formulation makes a good jumping off point for all the other material I discuss, which is heavily referenced and generally to as standard authorities as one could wish for.

> Meanwhile, experimental evidence is contradicted. For instance, amphetamine > is correlated with improvements in IQ, not to the tune of 20 points, more > like four[5]. In fact, things as random -- and ostensibly detrimental -- as > mescaline[6] can improve certain aspects of mental functioning, albeit at > the cost of others. That what are essentially shots in the dark can produce > noticeable improvements in certain qualities bodes well for rational drug > design, which has been a success in other fields e.g. cisplatin vs. > imatinib.

There is nothing 'random' about your choice of those substances and it is dishonest to describe it as so. You chose ampehtamines and mescaline because they are some of the very few substances which can claim to improve mental functioning as opposed to be inert or poisons. (Is a random pharmaceutical drug a random drug? No, because it has been through a rigorous selection process which may have examined hundreds of thousands of millions of chemicals in the pharmacorp or university's search for new drugs.) And as you point out, the benefits are offset by costs: mescaline has some famous effects, but amphetamines in the experiments also damage performance on some tasks. Finally, you do not show how these substances are completely free lunches, and so your entire paragraph is a non sequitur.

> Another thing that is important to keep in mind is that the workings of the > body can be highly counterintuitive. For instance, one might expect choline > supplementation to increase the level of brain acetylcholine. It seems > natural, right? But it's not true[7].

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092549270...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925492703001045) "Oral choline increases choline metabolites in human brain"

> it is now generally believed to act primarily as an allosteric modulator on > ion channels linked to AMPA-sensitive glutamate receptors[9].

Could you elaborate on how your reference supports your assertion? It seems to be about discovering (half a century later) that piracetam also affects some other receptor, but I see nothing in it to support your claims about 'it is now generally believed' to act 'primarily' on this receptor.

> The most immediately difficult claim to me is the advocacy of spaced > repetition, when it is not clear why the claims of the article necessarily > apply to drugs but not to techniques such as this -- could we not evolve to > use it instinctively?

We _do_ use it by default. That's what it is: multiple presentations over long time periods form strong memories. The presence of the spacing effect in many differing species ([http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#generality-of- spaci...](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#generality-of-spacing- effect)) and different kinds of memories suggests that it's a heuristic for recognizing important regularly-repeating features of one's environment, rather than expanding substantial resources memorizing noise and regularly refreshing the synapses (see the Tononi papers for more discussion of the metabolic costs of sleep & memory). Spaced repetition itself is about faking this repeating regularity by a practice involving flash cards.

> The general thrust of my post is that "evolution" is not an argument that > computer scientists can throw around in order to do biology without actually > studying it[12], and that evolutionary psychology is often subject to > epistemological problems, cf. The Emperor's New Paradigm[13].

I am not a computer scientist. As for the rest, readers can make up their own minds.

<comment><USER30> I feel most of what you said simply contradicts me. That you have not bothered to do basic research here is evident:

>No, it follows from straightforward reasoning about natural selection. How could intelligence be selected for if it does not have a fitness advantage? If it has a fitness advantage, why has it not reached fixation? And so on.

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

This is why. It should be the first goddamn thing you look up. Or, you know, a systematic review of some sort. _Not_ your intuition. If something doesn't serve the primary drivers of the evolution of intelligence --which _by no means_ must select for general intelligence as measured by the Raven Progressive Matrices Test, then it need not be selected for! This isn't, of course something you should take from me. Read something. By someone who actually studies biology. u.u

<comment><AUTHOR> > I feel most of what you said simply contradicts me.

I feel I provided clear argument and at least as many citations, combined with less sloppy research and supercilious arrogance. And I note that you aren't bothering to address a single one of my points, such as pointing out that your confident claims about choline supplementation seem to be totally false.

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

I am sure you will be glad to explain to me, beyond a bare URL.

> If something doesn't serve the primary drivers of the evolution of > intelligence --which by no means must select for general intelligence as > measured by the Raven Progressive Matrices Test, then it need not be > selected for!

I never said evolution optimizes performance on a RAPM and most of the essay was about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Let's say you have a dog, and you want to make it as smart as a person. How would you do that? Giving it drugs won't work. The dog is limited by the brain structures that make it distinct from a human. Regardless of whatever drugs or supplements you give it, the dog will always act like a dog. Maybe it will be slightly smarter, but not in any truly astonishing way. Maybe with the right drug, it could learn 100 words instead of 20. But the dog won't be able to do everything a person can do.

The same goes for people. There's no way you'd be able to make a person meaningfully smarter through supplementation or drugs.

<comment><USER32> Essentially you just said:

> Supplementation could hypothetically improve the cognitive ability of dogs. > But it could never make them as smart as humans.

> The same goes for humans. Supplementation could never improve their > cognitive abilities.

I suppose maybe this shoddy little syllogism would be forgivable if you haven't had your coffee yet this morning.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I suppose maybe this shoddy little syllogism would be forgivable if you > haven't had your coffee yet this morning.

Caffeine may not be improving his intelligence, but removing damage ie. withdrawal. (And so about as surprising as 'lack of sleep deprivation increases intelligence!' or 'lack of iodine deficiency increases intelligence!') This is one of the challenges of studying addictive stimulants: how do you know whether, for experienced tolerant users, the apparent benefits are genuine benefits or just treating withdrawal?

<comment><USER32> It's a really interesting question. I'm looking askew at the coffee cup in front of me. I suppose it makes the most sense for studies to begin prior to first exposure; to have data on subjects going back perhaps even as long as it takes for them to become tolerant. I suppose factoring out the effect of learning for a long-term study which involves cognitive tests is it's own challenge as well? I'm enjoying [http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#caffeine](http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#caffeine) now :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I believe that gwern is a little too obsessed about IQ.

<comment><USER34> It's common on less wrong to be very pro-IQ. I think this is a mix of contrarianism and desperately wanting to be superior at something, since most people on less wrong don't seem to be terribly well-off in other respects.

That said, it does seem like IQ correlates well with various other measures of success, unless all of the articles Gwern cites are wrong in some way (which is fairly probable), so you'd expect something to be there.

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Human brain is stupid - fit to the wrong environment. I was thinking the other day: Babies are afraid of strangers, any new people, especially if those are a little scary. But that makes no sense in modern countries - nobody ever threatens this child, and if on off-change somebody does, he'll try to be as "friendly" as possible when doing so. Children scares make no sense! Adult anxiety makes no sense either!

<comment><USER20> I think that should civilization collapse a lot of behaviors will begin to make a lot of sense. Hopefully that never occurs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Gwern has some very good essays; I don't think this is one of them, because it's about 'laws' created on less wrong rather than anything actionable.

It seems possible to dismiss this entire article with another less wrong catechism: "life isn't fair."

<comment><AUTHOR> > It seems possible to dismiss this entire article with another less wrong > catechism: "life isn't fair."

I don't see how that's remotely relevant.

<comment><USER34> Well, it's a bit of a fully general counterargument, but then, so is "there's no such thing as a free lunch."

> If the proposed intervention would result in an enhancement, why have we not > already evolved to be that way?

Life isn't fair.

Drugs seem to make you think faster/stay up later/be happier? Evolution didn't get it right the first time? Life isn't fair.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Well, it's a bit of a fully general counterargument, but then, so is > "there's no such thing as a free lunch."

It's not a fully general counterargument because it predicts a lot of things. Claiming that's a fully general counterargument is like saying the Halting problem is a fully general counterargument. It isn't.

> Life isn't fair.

Huh? How does that follow? 'Water is flowing uphill. Guess life isn't fair.' 'The hot air is not dispersing throughout the room due to convection. Guess life isn't fair.' 'Wall Street is incorrectly pricing a derivative, leaving billions in profit on the floor. Guess life isn't fair.'

<comment><USER34> >Huh? How does that follow?

Evolution isn't guaranteed to arrive at optimal outcomes at any given point in time. Obviously "algernon's law" isn't a, you know, law, because if that were the case humans wouldn't exist because any increase in intelligence would be accompanied by a corresponding drop in chimpanzee fitness.

Why are modern humans the point where this stops being true? The whole thing smells like sour grapes.

Why do people on MDMA have so much fun? Because life isn't fair. All the people who lived before MDMA will never have that much fun. Evolution just didn't hit the lucky path where humans are constantly tripping balls. Life isn't fair.

>It's not a fully general counterargument because it predicts a lot of things.

So what doesn't it predict?

>Claiming that's a fully general counterargument is like saying the Halting problem is a fully general counterargument. It isn't.

Well, the specific counterexample that indicates the halting problem is never generally solvable is not a fully general counterargument, yes. But I don't see how this is related.

Is there some reason why you think that using drug therapies to drastically increase human general intelligence is an impossibility akin to water flowing uphill? This is the logical step that the article failed to convey adequately to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why are modern humans the point where this stops being true? The whole thing > smells like sour grapes.

Humans are the exception that proves the rule, just like efficient markets hypothesis does not mean that no one makes money on Wall Street - but the vanishing few people with the skills and knowledge make money. It is an observation that the base rate of successful improvement must be _extremely tiny_.

> All the people who lived before MDMA will never have that much fun. > Evolution just didn't hit the lucky path where humans are constantly > tripping balls. Life isn't fair.

To give the example I already gave in my essay, evolution may or may not have hit the lucky path, but if it did, because it disables perception of danger, the goofy lucky people would be quickly eliminated by Inspector Darwin.

> So what doesn't it predict?

It predicts that if we discover a genuine improvement in intelligence, it will be complex, fitness-reducing, or tiny. This is a very strong and specific prediction which seems to be doing well.

> Is there some reason why you think that using drug therapies to drastically > increase human general intelligence is an impossibility akin to water > flowing uphill?

Water flowing uphill is not an impossibility: it is extremely unlikely. I chose my examples to be unlikely but not impossible - just like it is not impossible that someone will discover a way to majorly increase intelligence which is simple and without reproductive fitness penalties, it's just incredibly unlikely.

<comment><USER34> >Humans are the exception that proves the rule,

You know, this phrase actually means "an exception that makes the rule more specific," not "a counterexample that mysteriously makes the rule more likely."

>To give the example I already gave in my essay, evolution may or may not have hit the lucky path, but if it did, because it disables perception of danger, the goofy lucky people would be quickly eliminated by Inspector Darwin.

This is a post-hoc justification, not an advance prediction, and not a finding of a focused research campaign. As is the rest of this article.

You haven't convinced me that any of those things are fitness-reducing! On the contrary, I think that to the extent that humans are fitness-maximizers rather than adaptation-executers, those things all increase fitness by rather a lot.

>This is a very strong and specific prediction which seems to be doing well.

Don't the legions of coked-up amphetamined-up professionals totally disprove this?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


From Graduate School Student to Amazon Warehouse Janitor - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/12/from-graduate-student-to-amazon-warehouse-janitor.html <comment><USER2> This is the dark underbelly of education/academia. Selling worthless dreams to young people on credit. If we didn't have a perverse glorification of education in this country, we'd give the education industry the scrutiny and malign it deserves. (We go after pawn shops and pay day lenders but at least they provide valuable liquidity.)

And there is also an oft-missed social justice aspect to all this. Professors and teachers are disproportionately white (and by definition, college- educated): [https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61). We sell education as a way to overcome the legacy of systematic oppression of certain minority groups, but we are actually creating quite a large wealth transfer from disadvantaged minorities to college-educated white people. And members of these minority groups aren't seeing the pay-off from paying their tithes to the educational establishment. As the author notes in the article:

> A 2014 study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research revealed that > an incredible 55.9 percent of black recent college graduates were > "underemployed" and working in a position that didn't require a four-year > college degree.

<comment><USER3> The worst are expensive "professional" master's degree programs in careers that seem like they'd be very promising in terms of job opportunities at first glance: public health, public administration, biotechnology, legal interpreting, etc. I'm afraid that many grad programs in data science have the potential to join this group.

They all seem like "responsible" careers that someone worried about making a living could turn to. And then these graduate programs make expensive and misleading glossy brochures and web sites to entice students into a career where jobs are plentiful and well-paid.

Well, you can turn those programs into a decent job, but you have to play your cards _just right_. You have to choose the exact subfield that is hot right now, and pick up skills that aren't necessarily taught at the grad program. And you have to get into the exact right internship, or get lucky enough to snag one of the dwindling number of government jobs in your field. But no one at these schools bothers to tell the students these things. So in the end, relatively few graduates end up working in the field they studied.

But they do keep the $50,000-100,000 in debt they accumulated.

<comment><USER4> > And you have to get into the exact right internship, or get lucky enough to > snag one of the dwindling number of government jobs in your field.

There aren't a dwindling number of government jobs in public administration or public health.

> But no one at these schools bothers to tell the students these things.

Several schools' in those fields big draw is their internship/fellowship programs and connections to key employers in the public or private sector, and these things are heavily marketed as important.

> So in the end, relatively few graduates end up working in the field they > studied.

A number of professional degrees are competitive advantage in related and even distant fields as well as their exact field, so that's not a sign of not getting a significant career advantage from the degree.

<comment><USER5> Columbia? Sure. Tulane or Wash U? Uhhhhh...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The book "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art" ballparks some figures on the Power Law distribution of artist incomes in a global city.

Making a living as an independent creative is really hard. Marketing through channels like Instagram could help (10k true fans). Even creatives who get to be "creative" by way of being in an agency where they "apply" their creativity don't have an easy life (constant deadlines and stress). Being creative on a deadline can definitely take the joy out of creating.

So many people want to be a writer. There are tons of writer workshops/retreats. Usually they feature writers who have achieved some level of success. But the reality is that someone like Kristen Roupenian who got a book deal out of her "Cat Person" story that went viral was very lucky. The right story at the right cultural moment.

> "40k artists resident in London (about same number in NYC)

For London and NYC each:

75 superstar artists (>$1M/yr income)

300 mature, successful artists (>$100k/yr income)

5,000 part time artists (need to supplement their income)"

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm going to go against the grain here and say that the argument that only "marketable" skills are valuable is a farce. The United States is a cultural black hole and this article exemplifies why. Engineering, the STEM fields, and tech are also cultural wastelands. This is a _major_ issue for me -- and one of the reasons I'm trying to get out of tech.

Even if we ignore the fact that some of our greatest thinkers often had "non- marketable" proclivities (Newton was also an Anglican theologian, Einstein worked as a patent clerk, Bertrand Russell wrote poetry, C.S Lewis was an author, etc.), there's something deeply human about being able to put pen to paper. But, for whatever reason, we are losing sight of why poetry, music, and art is valuable. This is a wide-ranging problem and no one seems interested in fixing it.

<comment><USER8> > But, for whatever reason, we are losing sight of why poetry, music, and art > is valuable.

Everyone thinks those things are valuable, but due to nearly costless distribution of media the very best in their field can distribute their art to the entire world and we can enjoy it. It's a market that lends itself to superstar economics now, like spectator sports stars.

As a consumer of art, it has never been easier to enjoy and appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember (mis)using the local bookstore as my personal library during my childhood (late 80s, early 90s). The proprietor was somewhat in the mold of this author, and I learned a lot both from her as well as other patrons who stopped by, chatting, drinking copious amounts of free coffee, and buying books. In other words: it was one of those places that served far more purposes than just the economic one of distributing letters on dead trees.

Then Amazon came along, and it was obviously far better, in many respects: suddenly, I had easy access to foreign language books, for one thing.

But, less obviously, other benefits were lost. Mostly those that escape measurement by econometrics. Not just in terms of squeezing all there is out of people that are suddenly the subject of the economic force of an employer the size of Amazon. Small stores, within walking distance, i. e. the traditional "downtown" is gone, and with it all chances of surreptitiously meeting anyone from the mayor to your neighbour. It's all online now, or sometimes a big-box store outside of town within a barren cultural desert of parking lots and lots.

But the argument is hard to make: why (and how) should anyone forgo cheap prices, or the comfort of intensely personal transport, for my vague yearning of community? And so it will continue, the better future, as imagined by Kafka and brought to the big screen in Wall-E.

(presented here mostly as an alternative to the inevitable gloating of STEM majors over the failure of others to find a place in the world catering to _their_ strengths and interests.)

<comment><USER10> Regarding that last point: It carries the assumption that people in STEMMFT (science technology engineering math medicine finance and the trades) do not have strengths and talents in other areas that they set aside to pursue their careers.

Our society seems to have no problem taking a rational approach to something like, for example, basketball. Unless you are one of a few truly phenomenal people with the talent and drive to succeed professionally, playing basketball is a hobby. Full stop. You can count on coaches to (mostly) objectively advise you as to whether or not you are one of those people.

Not so, the liberal arts. What was intended as a program of enculturation for the children of the wealthy elite has turned into a monster that devours the children of the working class, who are mostly not exceptional, and for whom an arts degree is an expensive diversion at best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > bachelor's degree in English, getting a master's degree in creative

I think people need to do a lot more research into career earnings and job prospects. These degrees have never paid well, which is unfortunate for the subject of the article.

</comment><comment><USER12> So many English grads, so few jobs.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1) theres a reason we have the phrase "starving artist" ... its a feast of famine career. Talk about a degree meaning little. Liberal arts is the last place a degree matters.

2)beyond job choice or debt. Did this person not take internships during college??? Cry me a river. You take jobs during bachelor years, you get reccmondations talk to your employment office (most colleges have them) and you have something lined up (espcially for a grad). I smell that this person does not work well with others and bruned all of her bridges with her colleagues.

Are we getting the full story, is this person good at what they studied and worked hard to make connections? Possibly not. This is an anecdote that should not be used as conclusive evidence of anything.

<comment><USER3> > worked hard to make connections

Yeah, but there are lots of people who are hard, smart workers, good at what they do, but they either

a) don't realize how important it is to make connections in order to even _survive_ in today's professional world, or

b) were told that all they had to do to succeed in life is go to college, pick a realistic major, work hard, be honest, be trustworthy. Well, that's often not enough.

You almost always have to have a large professional network in order to thrive in today's world.

And many people struggle with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> She is a good writer. Probably could get a job as content creator at most start-ups and large companies. I wonder if she ever considered this path, unless I'm missing something.

<comment><USER9> Rightly or wrongly, she may have been put off by the lack of respect for the humanities so prevalent within the startup scene.

Point of evidence: the gradual replacement of the term "author" with "content creator".

<comment><USER15> "Author" is a more specific term - there are many jobs that require ability to write well, but it doesn't involve any creation of original work or much choice of expression(as an author would), and it's entirely accurate to say that you're creating content according to your employers needs but you're not really an author or copywriter. E.g. writing summaries of other authors, semi- structured product descriptions, part of highly normative technical writing, and even fake reviews (it's a whole industry...) or astroturfing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "The space, which stretches out across several football fields and up four > flights of stairs, does give the illusion of forced servitude. "

Perhaps more than an illusion in practice: Nobody takes those jobs if they can find any alternative...and then the structure of those jobs (time commitment, low pay, inability to take time off) makes it hard to even look for another.

</comment><comment><USER17> why did she have to make it about being a black woman? instead of the other factors. i know the same exact story but with white men.

<comment><USER18> Because stats show otherwise

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This person seems to think they are entitled to a living in art/poetry just because they got a graduate degree in it. Degrees don't ensure employment, marketable skills do, and we should not mislead students to this fact.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't go that far. I read the article in full, and it's an interesting description of the world behind the things many of us take for granted (Amazon, etc.) as well as some commentary on the author's own life journey. It sounds like she expected it to be easier to find a REAL job with a degree - teaching, creative writing, etc. - only to be surprised at the lack of opportunities for "non-professional graduates".

My parents strongly urged all of their children to pursue professional, specific degrees: engineering, law, medicine, or accounting/finance. They reinforced time and time again that "liberal arts degrees" provided fewer career options, and to put it plainly, that I would probably end up broke if I chosen that path. I don't think they would have provided financial support to study something like, for example, music. Or even psychology, for that matter, unless the goal was to be a PhD/academic.

I agree with your points, however, that degrees do not guarantee employment and we should not mislead students. Too many students think "degree = job". Having observed the Norwegian education system from afar (Norwegian mother & family), I advocate the way they do it and the way many Europeans have vocational programs and opportunities for technical training as an alternative to university. Even the janitors in Switzerland may train for as much as 3 years ( see [https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss- skills_training-t...](https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss- skills_training-to-be-the-best--champion-apprentices/41043876) ). Although, I do not know how that would work in the American culture, where tradesmen typically are not respected and do not make as much money as engineers and the like. Income inequality is a much bigger problem here than in some of the Scandinavian and European countries.

TLDR: degree != job, if paying for degree, get a technical one (engineering), accounting/finance, or legal/medical. Make good grades. Grades are more important in some professions than others. Don't expect to get a job with a liberal arts degree.

<comment><USER20> Not always true a many of the high status high paying jobs out side of tech prefer traditional non STEM degrees.

A degree in some of the traditional liberal degrees History, Litrature from good Uni (Ivys' Oxbridge ) is still viable.

I used to work (at one of the big publishers) with a younger colleague who had a first from Oxford in English - she has now moved into the City and probably earns as much if not more than some of the developers

<comment><USER21> That is like saying all kids should play basketball because they could get into the NBA. There are always lucky rich people. A ton of Microsoft and Amazon VPs have local MBA degrees. Does that mean that my Seattle City MBA will make me $1 million a year?

<comment><USER20> That's not the really same thing I was talking about high paid and high status jobs that almost universally recruit liberal arts grads "like them" from certain universities.

The cult of the MBA is a separate thing.

<comment><USER21> Sorry, that was my point by approaching the 'truth' from both directions.

They were already in the class or network of people. They knew they were going to be 'doing that work' because they were already recruited into that world long before university. It has nothing to do with their degree other than a passing qualification that they were expected to receive and in many cases the school just hands them no matter what their grades really were.

The degree is a technicality to their position and I am saying that the example you gave while interesting is not normal for anyone planning to work for a living.

I worked peripherally to publishing and am quite familiar with the situation. We had $1 million plus commission sales people 'of the right sort'. Did they know what the tech they sold did or have any real sales skills? Did it matter?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/w2008.html <comment><USER2> I don't think I'll be applying. Looking through my comments, I see at least 2 instances where pg has answered quite irritated towards me. The rest of my comments are me attacking other potential founders on their poor implementations. I'D not pick ME if I was on the team.

Anyways, let me give a few areas for potential applicants:

1\. Organize bookmark tags right. Del.icio.us is nice and all, but things tend to get disorganised

2\. iPhone app for public transportation

3\. Firefox/IE plugin that makes financial information from bank websites accessible in a global unified format. By financial info, I mean payin/payout history.

4\. Debt pay-off site - site that organises the credits of people into a manageable format and tells them what to set aside to get it done with. Include retirement fund as a side option

6\. Collaborative website for writing episodes for TV-Shows. Will take fan fiction to the next level. Scriptwriters will like the feedback, and obsessive fans will pay to be part of the inner circle

7\. Religious books discussion site. Mix up the religions and abstract the discussion

8\. And of course, the favorite of a snappy gentleman like myself - Let people upload pictures of themselves and dress them up in latest purchasable fashion. Find alternatives to expensive designer clothes.

As they say, ideas are cheap. Each has potential if implemented the right way.

I won't be applying, but good luck to all those who will be!

<comment><USER3> i think they only care what you build, and if you're smart. the idea of blacklists, or pg holding grudges, etc., is pretty silly.

they're pretty clear on this: if you make something people want (or have a demo that shows that you will), you should be fine for the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope my question gets answered here. In our case we're already incorporated and the product (not a prototype) is going through the final stages of beta testing. We are not very interested in money at this point (certainly not in $20k) but we _are_ interested in good business contacts and very open to suggestions and advice from more experienced folks.

I wonder if this makes any sense for us to submit an application, since there are not 20, we're incorporated, we're not living in a dorm, we don't need $20k and we already have the product. The only thing we'd be interested in is well... good contacts (we're not in Bay Area) and business dev. consulting.

<comment><USER5> I'll reproduce what I sent to tx via email, just in case anyone is curious (I'm with Virtualmin, the company pg mentioned):

We really enjoyed YC. I've talked about it a bit in public, here:

[http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234583&cid=19110535](http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234583&cid=19110535)

And the blowback from that on YC News:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21907>

We definitely didn't care much about the $15k (in our two-founder case), though it did nicely offset the cost of my move (I sold my 350Z at a rather unfortunate price, and found myself spending more than twice as much on rent as I was paying on a mortgage in Austin). And we're not college kids (we're 32 and 33). We were already selling product when we applied.

We viewed it primarily as a really good set of introductions, a good learning experience, and the chance to bounce our product off of the folks who would in the end be the primary users. Our actual buyers are hosting providers, but they buy what their customers want, and everybody in YC is a hosting provider customer, and probably a thought leader in some area of development.

We don't begrudge the 5% stake that YC holds, at all, and I think we've already gotten our equities worth from the deal, and we continue to take advantage of their advice. If it hasn't already been made clear by the above bits and other stuff I've posted on YC News, anybody that goes through YC has a really really good chance of getting funding, if they want it. Nobody who aggressively sought funding has failed to raise it...some folks figured out during the program that what they had was not fundable and so didn't go after more money. Others (like us) are biding our time a bit, as we sign on bigger customers and get ourselves into a really solid bargaining position before seriously approaching anyone. We have lunch with them when they call us (and they do call), but we're not asking for money yet. We'd probably take angel money at this stage, but the VCs zeroed in on us as the only enterprise business in the bunch, so that's who we hear from. ;-)

If nothing else, moving to the valley was probably the best thing we could have done (Austin Ventures is great and all, and they do a lot of deals...but there's just the one of them, versus hundreds of funding sources in the valley...if there's any chance you'll need money, the odds of getting it are vastly higher here), and YC forced me to make that move (my co-founder was already in Santa Clara).

<comment><USER5> Oh, yeah, we were already a Texas corporation, as well. We dissolved the TX business, and started fresh in Delaware. The structure that YC did for us was a lot nicer anyway. There's a lot of stuff that lawyers in Texas (at least the lawyer I talked to) don't even think about that can be problems later on when funding comes or when options are issued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I may be remembering all this completely wrong, but I seem to recall yc offering a couple of alternatives to the usual application process - that you could apply with no idea, or you could apply with no co-founders and yc would hook you up as an early employee of a yc-funded startup.

Am I right about those offers, and are you still making them?

<comment><USER7> This is just our experience interviewing last season. We applied with two ideas, both with prototypes. The discussion was pretty much exclusively about the idea - how new it is, how easy it is, how interesting it is, whether or not it's porn/music related (either category is probably not a good idea btw).

We had a good response to both our prototypes, but ultimately we were told our idea didn't seem different enough. The impression I got from our interview was that the idea is actually pretty important.

It kind of makes sense, since you're competing against other amazing hackers with good ideas. It doesn't matter as much if you're good -they all were-, you really do need a great idea to go with your team.

<comment><USER8> Just because they spent the whole time asking you about your idea doesn't neccessarily mean they were mostly interested in your idea...getting someone to talk about their prototype is probably a much better way to guage who they are and how they think than asking "Who are you?, and how do you think?"

Of course I wasn't there, so I don't really know what happened.

<comment><USER7> That's a solid point - the above was just my subjective impression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What are our chances ? We are catering to a business software category and not a web solution. We are developing a product that will solve business problems and is not for general public. \- JS

<comment><AUTHOR> We've funded those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How advanced do prototypes have to be? For example, did loopt have a prototype? If not, how did they demonstrate their ability in embedded systems programming? If they did, did they bring in a hacked up cell phone?

<comment><AUTHOR> The more the better, obviously, but you don't _have_ to build anything. We would have funded Loopt after nothing more than talking to Sam about his plans.

I don't remember exactly how far they were along then. I think they may have had a simple app running on phones, but with simulated location info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've recently come across an interesting situation and would like to know how it would effect my company's chance at being accepted by YC.

An investor I knew in a prior experience has expressed an interest in investing in my new endeavor. The application FAQ lists an understandable preference to avoid funding a company that has already incorporated.

The amount the investor suggested is sizable (enough to sustain operations for at least 3 years even after hiring some very much needed staff/co-founders), and since the idea is substantial the money is very appealing.

But, though the investor is an engineer, he has no affiliation with the tech industry at large, so I'm afraid that I would be missing a great deal of support by taking this money.

Thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know exactly what your situation is, but if he is not someone you owe something to, the optimal solution would be to apply to YC first. If you're accepted, you can invite this would-be investor to Demo Day, where he can compete with all the other investors to fund you; if not, he's plan B.

Note that this assumes that you're not indebted to the guy in any way-- that he is simply a source of money.

BTW, 3 years is a lot of money. It suggests to me that you're either raising too much or (more likely) underestimating your expenses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did Winter applications start this early last year?

PG: Given the deadline is still a long ways off, is there a preference for groups to apply early and update the application and demo along the way, or to wait until the end to apply when things are solid? Just curious..

<comment><AUTHOR> Lately we've had a lot of people emailing us asking how to apply, so we got the w2008 application form up. Really there's no reason not to switch to the next cycle as soon as we pick the startups for the previous one.

One the whole it's probably better to update the application incrementally. You'll get more attention that way; we may even suggest ideas; and we're not likely to have time to do that if you apply the day before the deadline.

<comment><USER10> _One the whole it's probably better to update the application incrementally. You'll get more attention that way; we may even suggest ideas..._

This statement sounds like the YC team reads unsubmitted applications. Have I misread? Anyone have hints on how to maximize the chance of getting comments back? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was assuming by "apply" jsjenkins meant submit the application, since you can resubmit as often as you want. Since we read applications online, we see the most recently submitted version of any application we look at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> With 50+ teams now funded I wonder how much potential competition with existing YC companies will play a factor in acceptance. Especially given that it's likely many YC companies will not have launched by the app deadline.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose it's bound to happen eventually, but so far there haven't been any collisions. The odds are lower than you might think, because both groups would have to be working on the same thing and good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> We have a VERY distributed team. Is it ok if only 1 of us move to the Bay area?

<comment><AUTHOR> If this person is the CEO, and he/she's 1 of 2, that would be ok. If it's 1 out of 4 who's not the CEO, that's not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I predict a huge increase in the number of applications this time, thanks to all the publicity and YC success stories. Good luck to everyone!

<comment><USER16> How many applications do you think they receive on average?

<comment><AUTHOR> We got about 430 last time, of which we ultimately funded 20.

(1 of those 20 immediately merged with a startup from a previous round, so only 19 came to Cambridge.)

<comment><USER17> Those are impressively bad odds for being accepted.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're made to look bad by how easy it is to apply. If you make a website offering people money if they fill out a form, a lot of people will fill it out. But the odds for a good team are not as bad as they might seem. At least a third of the applications are egregiously broken: 13 year old founders, people who want to "telecommute" from India, people who want us to fund their plumbing supply store, etc...

<comment><USER18> People might ask you first if its ok to "telecommute" from India, before applying. I was not aware "asking" that may put them into "egregiously broken" category :)

<comment><USER19> I'm still not aware of that. Ask away. This is a far more convenient place to ask stupid questions than, say, Startup School. (That's what I did. At the first startup school, I asked almost every founder I could get my hands on: "So, what would you do if you didn't have a co-founder?").

If they get your application, and it says "I am from India and can't leave", then by their own rules that's broken, but there's no penalty for asking stupid questions.

How you react, as you come to realize that the question you are asking is a stupid one, probably says something relevant about a startup founder.

<comment><USER18> How to react is something what you got learn at the first place.Apparently you have no idea what my reply was all about my friend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I will not be applying a third time. Good luck to all those who do though.

</comment><comment><USER10> I assume, that YC prints out a stack of these applications and grades them on paper. Have the printouts ever looked like crap because of some weird browser thing? If so, is there any chance we could see how the application looks when it's printed?

<comment><AUTHOR> We rate them online. The application looks the same to us when we're reading it as it does to you while you're editing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Has your position changed regarding single founders, or is it still a case of single founders need not apply?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's covered in the fourth from last paragraph.

Basically, we'll bend any rule if you're a genius, but anyone, even a genius, is more likely to succeed if they have a cofounder.

<comment><USER22> You'll bend any rule? Does that apply to the "must move to the Bay area" rule? (Yes, I am a genius.)

If it weren't for that rule, I'd seriously consider applying -- but if I wanted to move to Silicon Valley, I'd work for Google.

<comment><AUTHOR> We once funded a company that didn't move. It didn't work very well. A startup would have to be _really_ good to convince us. And if we did agree it would hurt them, relative to what they might have done if they'd moved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about co-founders who are H1B's and would face legal consequences for quiting their company?

<comment><USER23> An H1-B doesn't prevent you from switching jobs, no?

<comment><USER11> it does for my potential co-founder. He's been working here for over 6 years with no GC. apparently you can't renew your H1B after X years, only stay with the same company.

<comment><USER23> Have you consulted a lawyer about this? Sometimes it can be quite surprising to see the solutions lawyers can cook up (with the appropriate fees of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> PG: Do you prefer teams to submit not quite complete forms and then incrementally add info as time goes by, or do you prefer a complete application submitted and then minor updates as time goes by?

</comment><comment><USER24> I am going to submit RunFatBoy for consideration. I have a complete working app, so hopefully that will put me in a position of advantage.

<comment><USER16> I've never applied but I'll go ahead and suggest you find a new name for whatever it is you're building...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I dont think there's any point in my applying again - am likely on PG's blacklist. :D

<comment><USER26> Welcome to the club. :) You'd get an email if you were on the official blacklist, though.

<comment><USER25> hey rms, I didnt know you were a real live snake oil salesman! :) I thought it was just a figure of speech but apparently they do exist. heh

(Just looked at your bio: "importing and selling unique herbal substances").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I m still workin on my prototype :(, best of luck to all who are applying this time.

<comment><USER27> You won't have it ready by October 11?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> want to report a minor bug in the application form

when typing the symbol ' (as in pg's) and then pressing update, a bunch of letter looking like "ÂÂ" appear in front of the symbol ' in the updated version.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not just the application form. If you type utf-8 encoded chars into any form, you get crap out. We're actually trying to debug this right now. For the time being use plain ascii.

(That thing that looked like ' wasn't. It was probably something you copied and pasted, e.g. from MS Word.)

<comment><USER29> Here's a solution that covers a bunch of charset bases if you want to move to UTF-8:

1) Add accept_charset="UTF-8" to your form tag.

2) Add the hidden variable _charset_ with no value.

3) Add <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> right after the head tag in the html.

4) Make sure apache is serving the file in UTF-8 by default, which is usually by accomplished by adding AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 to the relevant virtual host configuration.

Some of this stuff is redundant, but doing the above will usually ensure the page and form view and submit in UTF-8. To be extra sure, you can double check the value of the _charset_ variable that gets passed.

If you are using postgres and/or perl, I can give more details on what to do there as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not using Apache. I wrote the http server in Arc. Actually I think I know where the bug is: in my urldecode fn. Fix coming soon I hope. But not today: I have to cook dinner for the startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very nice. The time has come for that app :)</comment>


Show HN: Open Source Android App to Share to Clipboard - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tengu.sharetoclipboard

<comment><USER2> Cool. I've been out of Android development for some time, but why does this need be an Activity? Couldn't it simply be a service (an IntentService or otherwise) that receives the intent and drops the text in the clipboard? Aren't Activitys usually associated with some UI that fills the screen?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've actually had issues with the app not showing in the share button when using IntentService, but following your suggestion we'll give it another go. :)

Thanks for your suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additional links:

GitHub: [https://github.com/tengusw/share_to_clipboard](https://github.com/tengusw/share_to_clipboard)

F-Droid: [https://f-droid.org/app/com.tengu.sharetoclipboard](https://f-droid.org/app/com.tengu.sharetoclipboard)

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this differ from the system "Share to clipboard" (at least on Android 5.0) option?

<comment><AUTHOR> Android 5.0 doesn't have "Share to clipboard", it's actually provided by Google Drive. Many (especially non nexus users) don't use Google Drive. Furthermore, this app is also useful for people not using a Google based Android, like the Amazon version or Replicant.

Edit: we also handle vcard and plan on adding other formats which Google drive doesn't.

<comment><USER3> Interesting that drive provides this functionality, and not the system. Thanks for clarification! (:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using [https://github.com/johanhil/copy-to- clipboard](https://github.com/johanhil/copy-to-clipboard). How does this one differ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've also used it for a while. That one has an annoying visual bug (flashing phantom activity) and doesn't support things other than text/plain.

We would have normally contributed back to the original project instead of writing from scratch, but since it hasn't been improved in years, the author is completely inactive and it's a fairly simple application, we decided to roll our own.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> makimoto, you are hellbanned for ages and I don't really see why. Sorry!

Reposting makimoto's comment: Using "share to clipboard" from Alexey Lyubeznov. His is 11kb. Yours is 1mb+. What does yours do that his does not?

<comment><AUTHOR> Handle VCards and soon other types (this pulls in some libs).

Also, now looking following your comment, we are pulling in the appcompat library for no apparent reason, we'll remove that, and it'll probably shrink down the binary size. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:Thoughts on Crowdsourcing Crime reports - <AUTHOR>

I am from India and I  recently started an initiative to fight crime using crowd-sourcing .Here is the link to beta application http://www.zerocrime.org.
Currently users can file unoffical reports and we place them on the map. Over time, We plan to aggregate these reports to create a crime rating index of neighborhoods and areas will be color-coded as per their crime rating. We will also conduct advanced analytics and longitudinal studies to generate meaningful insights for law enforcement agencies and media houses. We also plan to develop crime prevention tools such as prediction of crime through data analysis.
Thoughts ? <comment><USER2> How will you identify fake reports?. I think it could be a good idea, but the map can be intentionally modified by random people as I see it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is difficult as we do not ask for any personal information of the reporter (except email address) and all reports are filed anonymously. At present, we are validating the genuineness of the reporter through email verification. I understand that won't ensure complete genuineness but the idea is not to focus on individual reports. An area will be tagged high-risk only when sufficient numbers of cases of a particular crime are filed on the platform. Even if there are a few fake entries, the threat will definitely be real and the idea is to bring that forward. Moreover, we are doing manual moderation and in future we plan to add crowd-moderation that can help in identifying fake reports to some extent .

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> \- I think it is a great idea, especially if you can make it in real time.</comment>


Google Chrome won't be allowed on Windows 10 S - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-wont-be-allowed-on-windows-10-s/ <comment><USER2> Have I understood correctly: if you have Windows 10 S you won't be able to get Chrome (or any app) not approved by Microsoft?

If that's true, then anti-trust issues will once again loom. This time, MS will not be able to drive their competitor (Google) out of business like they did Netscape.

<comment><USER3> Now it's an industry practice (iOS, Chrome OS) so they're not villains anymore.

Users that install unapproved apps (via jailbreaks and vulnerabilities) are villains now.

<comment><USER4> s/villains/customers/

Windows 10 S is "only" 50 bucks away from running all those unapproved apps.

<comment><USER5> It's cheaper than that... I bought two upgrades from Windows 10 Home to Pro on ebay for less than $30.

<comment><USER4> > Home to Pro

We're talking about Windows 10 S.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough... I guess I was thinking the license upgrade TO Pro would work the same for S and it does for Home. Then again maybe MS will really check both source and destination and reject Home to Pro upgrade keys. /shrug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is Firefox allowed on chromebooks? I think the comparison with Chromebook is more appropriate than iOS devices.

<comment><USER7> You can set the chromebook in developer mode and have a full linux system with all the software you want.

Or you can install the android version of firefox.

So yes, it is allowed.

<comment><USER8> It's a minor detail, but I feel there's a difference between "allowed" and "possible". Developer mode has a bunch of caveats that neuter many of the selling points of ChromeOS and I'd argue is more akin to a "jailbreak", just one that Google doesn't play cat and mouse trying to stop you from using.

<comment><USER9> The Android term "rooting" would be closer than the iOS term "jailbreak", precisely because of the reason you cited: Google doesn't lock down ChromeOS like a jail.

<comment><USER8> Good call. I agree that's a more apt comparison. That said, it's still really locked down, it's just there's a key on the wall next to the door with a sign saying "beware of the gremlins".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Chromebooks do not allow any other browser besides Chrome. I don't see how this is different.

<comment><USER11> No, you can install any browsers from the Play Store on a Chromebook that supports installing Android apps.

[https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/7021273?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/7021273?hl=en)

Firefox runs on a Chromebook just fine: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox&hl=en)

<comment><USER12> Well, it's the same thing: you can install any browser from Microsoft's Store on Windows 10 S.

So, Google will either have to release Chrome targeted for Windows platform (same way Firefox did on Android) or not be available to Windows 10 S users.

<comment><USER11> Except Firefox on Android uses its own rendering/scripting engine; there's no requirement to use the "platform" engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> TLDR: Another recent ZDnet article explains that it's a rule for desktop browsers not being allowed by the centennial packaging process. Chrome, others are win32, and would be "packaged" if it weren't for this rule.

<comment><USER14> so, there's no reason why chrome couldn't be included in the store.

They should also get Opera and Firefox onboard.

<comment><USER15> Actually if you read the article, it clearly states another criterion which is the same on iOS and ChromeOS. That is, a web browser must use the HTML renderer and JavaScript engine from the host OS.

<comment><USER16> > Actually if you read the article, it clearly states another criterion which > is the same on iOS and ChromeOS.

ChromeOS has no such policy, even if the Play Store does (which, AFAICT, it doesn't) since ChromeOS, like Android, allows sideloading Android APKs and isn't limited to Store apps.

Because of sideloading, Play Store restrictions are not Android/ChromeOS restrictions. But Win 10S is Store apps only, so Windows Store restrictions are also Win 10 S restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Windows 10 S, announced last week, allows users to install only apps that > are distributed through the Windows Store.

What if I want to compile and run my own executables? How does this restriction work?

<comment><USER18> Likely signing by Microsoft? Based on what I've read, you will not be able to run your own executables. This is a big issue for University students who are often required to install textbook-sourced software for labs, class participation, etc.

Perhaps if you install a Visual Studio app from the Windows Store and use that to generate an executable, it will somehow sign the executable?

Meta: At what point does the post rate limit get lifted? If I post a couple of comments while browsing the articles and then attempt to reply to a comment with a question, I have already somehow hit the rate limit and I am blocked from posting for a few hours. It seems like there should be an exception for replying to a question on my own comment.

<comment><USER15> One option, from the article:

      If people would like to access apps from other stores and services, they can switch to Windows 10 Pro at any time.

<comment><USER4> There's a huge difference between "let students run wild and install any shit" and "publish a whitelist of allowed non-UWP apps via group policy".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't it just as allowed as it is on iOS for example?

</comment><comment><USER20> The developer in the article could convert his app from Chromium to UWP and resubmit: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/hwa- chr...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/hwa-chrome- conversion)

</comment><comment><USER21> They will change their mind I guess...

This is not an IE-6 time again.

</comment><comment><USER22>
        10.2.1

        Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate HTML and JavaScript engines provided by the Windows Platform.

and Microsoft is now completely back its 1990s behaviour</comment>


Moscow's blockchain voting system cracked a month before election - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/moscows-blockchain-voting-system-cracked-a-month-before-election/ <comment><USER2> What's the point of hacking a voting system that doesn't matter anyway? It's not like opposition parties in Russia have any chance of winning an election anyway, it doesn't matter how people vote, and the majority of the population have political opinions informed by state-run propaganda mills.

<comment><USER3> It's for the Moscow municipal government, not national-level.</comment></comment>