Long-term effects of Cannabis - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/109/40/E2657/1 <comment><USER2> Full text PDF <http://ernstchan.com.nyud.net/fefe/src/1346163651220.pdf>

Actual title is "Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife".

</comment><comment><USER3> Realistically, whats the chance you can get a statistically significant result in the very hostile environment that surrounds cannabis use from such a very broad study?

They couldn't closely control the purity, variety or frequency of cannabis use. They obviously can't control for social stigma.

I guess this is just my general displeasure at articles fishing for correlations in a sea of bad data, longing for that resolving barrier of "statistical significance".

<comment><USER4> Normally I would agree with you, but the controls you are calling for are unrealistic. While I'm no expert in the field, this is clearly not the first study to suggest long-term cognitive decline in adolescent-onset users, and any evidence that can support previous findings, albeit very small, is important to consider.

I think the authors are correct in stating that there is a popular and naive belief among adolescents that cannabis is safe - especially in moderation - and the evidence to date does nothing but refute that. Hell, in this study they found a statistically significant IQ drop (over the course of 20 years) for adolescent-onset users that only smoked 14 days out of the year on average (the median, to be precise). Even if they do put forth incomplete or questionable conclusions, teens should be exposed to more of these findings and be allowed to think for themselves. They certainly should not have to endure the inane public service announcements that merely reinforce the belief that marijuana is not actually "that bad."

<comment><USER5> There is an even more popular and naive belief that drinking alcohol is safe. With the current social conventions and legislation the consumption of this solvent is pervasive and deemed acceptable, while other drugs which are objectively less harmful are criminalized ferociously. It has to be said that all this is a rather arbitrary state of affairs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This definitely echoes my own observations. Due to various circumstances, in my life I have so far been thoroughly exposed to numerous, unconnected groups of drug users – all of which were smoking weed more or less regularly, and almost all of which were losers. I am very happy to find out about this study, and I hope it receives an adequate exposure.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like you've never met a graphic designer.

<comment><USER8> Or a programmer.

<comment><USER9> or a successful entrepreneur

<comment><USER10> But you don't know how much more successful they could be without smoking pot regularly.

<comment><USER6> thanks, I didn't want to say it myself :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's see who funded the study: (* added for emphasis) "This research received support from UK Medical Research Council Grants G0100527 and MR/K00381X/1, US National Institute on Aging Grant AG032282, US National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH077874, and _US National Institute on Drug Abuse_ __ __ __ __* Grant P30 DA023026. Additional support was provided by the Jacobs Foundation."

I agree adolescents probably shouldn't partake, but for adults, there's far worse things.

</comment><comment><USER12> The content is behind a pay wall

<comment><USER13> Welcome to the wonderful world of publicly funded science publication!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> can anyone name one figure who had an important contribution to mankind, and smoked weed?

<comment><USER14> Carl Sagan

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I didn't know

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So wait, let me get this straight. Using cannabis irregularly means that I will lose about one IQ point by the time I hit middle age? If there was ever a reason to smoke up!

<comment><USER15> 6 IQ points is a bigger deal, but for any of the other groups, the effects are certainly fairly minor..</comment></comment>


Overcoming Us vs. Them - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/why-your-brain-hates-other-people-rp <comment><USER3> I got to the end and realized I'd been reading Robert Sapolsky.

His "Biology of Human Behavior" Stanford lecture course in about 25 parts is on youtube. It's absolutely amazing; he's a great lecturer, articulate, funny, fascinating, a great storyteller about remarkable experiments and legendary scientists. It starts with evolutionary biology/sociobiology and goes down via a dozen levels of explanation ('buckets' he calls them) to brains and genes and how they work, in quite a lot of detail. I couldn't recommend it any more highly. p.s. My girlfriend (very non-sciency) loved it too.

<comment><USER4> Nautilus has great articles I wish there was a way to make a compilation of the best ones then binge read

<comment><USER5> I've enjoyed quite a lot of articles on Nautilus, but it's a shame the the people who write them aren't getting paid.

[http://nautil.us/blog/a-letter-from-the-publisher-of- nautilu...](http://nautil.us/blog/a-letter-from-the-publisher-of-nautilus)

<comment><USER6> tl;dr: their grant money dried up, and they've been limping along trying to find support.

If you like them, it looks like they sell subscriptions here: [http://shop.nautil.us/](http://shop.nautil.us/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This would be easier if We and Them simply differed in arbitrary preferences. But I fear that when We and Them disagree on basic epistemology, we simply sound crazy to each other.

And this irreconcilable difference, if it exists, will eventually always come out if you talk long enough.

<comment><USER8> The problem with Us vs. Them thinking isn't that there is a group of people that you fundamentally disagree with, but rather that you've constructed a somewhat nebulous "them" which you've ascribed all negative qualities about "them".

The way to recognise this is to ask yourself if you can actually name any particular example of the "them" you're arguing against. Because if not, you risk arguing against a straw man you yourself created.

We're at the point where whole communities are being erected to argue against a "them", usually with an opposing community arguing against a similarly distorted image of the "us".

<comment><USER9> > _The way to recognise this is to ask yourself if you can actually name any > particular example of the "them" you're arguing against._

Unfortunately, I think what can often compound this line of thinking is a willingness to speculatively ascribe qualities to people we've just met in an attempt to put them into a box we can relate to (either positively relate or negatively relate).

Asking someone to think of a particular example of "them" might simply lead to an example of someone they've judged on first impressions.

<comment><USER8> That's a fair point. I guess the real problem is that any claims about "them" can't really be refuted by anyone. So a better method would be to ask yourself if there's someone who could reject your claims. If not your statements are not falsifiable, which makes debating them somewhat pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In America today, you've got multitude of "us vs them" dynamics - anti- terrorist, liberal-vs-conservative, rich-vs-poor, black-vs-white, etc.

And at lot of this comes because, as the article says, "us versus them" is a powerful psychological dynamic. Given that that current American society is hyper-competitive, it seems likely this situation will continue. If pulling "us versus them" is akin to chemical warfare - a toxic affair for all concerned that only nets a marginal advantage, it will be used when actual chemical gets used - when one player is losing everywhere and no longer has to care. But that "pulling out all the stops" situation now happens ... always. When will politicians "go the low rout"? Always. When will media? etc.

Which goes back to hyper-competitive. When will it end? I don't know. How will end? Probably in tears but otherwise also hard to say.

<comment><USER11> Isn't this just the nature of reality though? A never-ending battle for resources and territory?

On time lapse, even tree roots are fighting for water, and leaves are fighting for sunlight.

I feel like this article might as well be called, "Overcoming Reality." Which the article basically admits, since these in-group / out-group distinctions are so deeply hardwired into our neurology.

Yes, cooperation works sometimes, but it's usually to beat out another cooperative group.

<comment><USER12> I thought exactly as you did. But then I read this book. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infini...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infinite_Games)

Your conception of "Reality" doesn't even include Zero Sum Games. Once you incorporate that, you can then look at the Finite and Infinite distinction.

The book is a tough read, but I guarantee you will love it, and will conclude that your model here explains 25% of "reality" at most.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I'll check it out.

Edit: The one star reviews on Amazon are hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is going to be the next big challenge in social tech:

 _Contact: The consequences of growing up amid diversity just discussed bring us to the effects of prolonged contact on Us /Theming. In the 1950s the psychologist Gordon Allport proposed "contact theory." Inaccurate version: bring Us-es and Thems together (say, teenagers from two hostile nations in a summer camp), animosities disappear, similarities start to outweigh differences, everyone becomes an Us. More accurate version: put Us and Thems together under narrow circumstances and something sort of resembling that happens, but you can also blow it and worsen things.

Some of the effective narrower circumstances: each side has roughly equal numbers; everyone's treated equally and unambiguously; contact is lengthy and on neutral territory; there are "superordinate" goals where everyone works together on a meaningful task (say, summer campers turning a meadow into a soccer field)._

How do we bring people who disagree back together? Technology is really good at getting people to do things which are individually gratifying so how do we encourage individuals to do something which is individually difficult but will have a strong positive effect on society?

<comment><USER14> Forced anonymity perhaps? Suppose you're a Striper and I'm a Dotter (from the deadly enemy Stripe and Dot tribes), but we both like to play guitar. Well if you show up on my guitar forum I'll be 'who let that filthy Striper in here?!' and will interpret even innocent participation as attempts to stripe up the place, regardless of whether I have been trying to take it over for the Dots or not.

But if we're just Guitarfan_1172 and Guitarfan_3654 then we can chat about guitars and build bonds that transcend the decor war, as long as neither of us goes off topic and starts discussing patterns. Of course the problem is that the positivity is latent and confined to the interior of the guitar forum, unless we meet in battle and _then_ become aware of our mutual guitar friendship which will cause us to re-evaluate our whole worldview.

Think of it as a poker-like game where you have public and private cards. Your public dot or stripe cards are your loyalty to your design tribe, and the # of stripes or dots across all your cards indicate your degree of group identification. But you also have hidden cards reflecting various private interests.

Let's say when you battle another player you're required to reveal one set of hidden cards if any other have the same or more points (or some other ratio) than your public loyalty cards. In this example you really love guitar and have to reveal your guitar cards. If the other player has the same cards they must also reveal theirs, or perhaps the revelation depends on the strength of their affiliation. Of course, by revealing your similarity of interest maybe you lose points among your own (stripe/dot) peer group because you have something in common with an enemy player...

You see where I'm going with this. Of course, any modeling of relationships and disruption built on this framework assumes that tribal affiliation is fundamentally arbitrary, eg as an accident of birth. If it turns out that the Stripers really and truly want to slice up their enemies or that the Dotters really and truly want to punch holes in them then mutual interest in guitars/crochet/pokemon may never be sufficient to overcome their differences. Thus a good deal depends on whether the enemies are opposed to each other by default or have made a conscious choice to fight each other, in which case that's likely to predominate over all other factors.

<comment><USER15> I remember internet forums as a teenager. Back when people didn't use real names and profile pics were of random characters or celebrities not our faces.

It honestly never crossed my mind that the people I was talking to could be anything other than white and mostly guys. I come from a country where races basically don't exist so that worldview made sense kinda.

Sometimes I wonder how many racist jokes I made to people who were black or asian and I had no idea. In my defense, those were just jokes/opinions I picked up on the internet, completely learned behavior as I was trying to learn how this "American Society" thing works because most of the internet seemed to follow american society rules.

Anonymity is great, but it has its drawbacks. Had I known the people I'm talking to are black/asian, I would've asked about their cultures and how they perceive this American Society thing I was exploring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >In other words, our visceral, emotional views of Thems are shaped by subterranean forces we'd never suspect. And then our cognitions sprint to catch up with our affective selves, generating the minute factoid or plausible fabrication that explains why we hate Them. It's a kind of confirmation bias: remembering supportive better than opposing evidence; testing things in ways that can support but not negate your hypothesis; skeptically probing outcomes you don't like more than ones you do.

So this is the challenge, then, probably no different than most "human condition" type challenges - to what extent do we let our subconscious thoughts drive out conscious ones?

Without consideration, we are slaves to our unconscious thoughts and instincts. As philosophers and religious leaders have demonstrated for millennia, however, we can wrestle our quick shot subconscious into relative submissions with enough application of conscious thought. Say, mindfulness, meditation, consideration.

So the article alleges that as a white male my amygdala is gonna fire off an aggression response when I see a black male, microseconds before my conscious brain can grab the wheel and apply my hard-fought-for values (non racist ones). Is this just how it's gonna be for me, or can I subvert even that initial, lizard brain initial response to be in line with my value that all humans are equal?

<comment><USER17> I think the us/them of race is much discussed, while other versions of us/them can creep in unexamined:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate- anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything- except-the-outgroup/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >"There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't."

"Only a sith deals in absolutes"

I love phrases like these. Not sure what to call them but they're fun. Recursive contradictions?

<comment><USER18> The first isn't a self-contradiction; it just places the speaker in the first camp.

<comment><USER16> Oh, good point. The sith one must be a contradiction, then, because it was said by a Jedi, so clearly both sith and Jedi can deal in absolutes.

<comment><USER19> Only if you believe Obiwan when he says it. The line is more or less pointing out the arrogance of the Jedi with Obiwan's hypocrisy. It comes up a few other places too, but like the rest of the prequels, messages aren't delivered very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Unpopular opinion - Is this something that we should seek to overcome entirely? These judgement calls are hard-wired into us for a reason. Whilst there are scenarios in which it is bad, there are scenarios in which it is good.

<comment><USER21> We can overcome them without removing them, by extending "us" widely enough. This is how a number of religions handled it, leading to their expansion over large swaths of diverse nations.

Seeing most everyone on Earth as ingroup improves collaboration and thus propels culture / prosperity.

<comment><USER22> But what if there is a group whose strategy is to take advantage of the trusting nature of everyone else for its own gains? In that case it would be advantageous to unite against them. Universal cooperation and trust is great when there are no attackers but it needs to be hardened against attacks somehow.

Also, does universal collaboration necessarily bring the best results? Seems like there might be a number of people over which universal coordination becomes infeasible.

<comment><USER16> If you mean a culture war scenario, this was discussed briefly in the article - do you focus on the success of your Us, or on the _relative_ success of your Us as compared to your Them?

I prefer the former, because it is a pure "improvement" mindset, whereas the latter allows for "success" via subjugation of other people while your Us stagnants.

<comment><USER14> That's a good strategy in the aggregate but complete defenselessness is no more sustainable than complete hostility

<comment><USER16> Defense against value invasion doesn't require offense against other values, does it?

<comment><USER14> Well, it depends on the content of those values. I'm opposed to eliminationist ideologies for example.

<comment><USER16> What is an eliminationist ideology, and does it require an offensive to avoid it influencing your cultural values?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've always been aware I have these subconscious biases. At a fundamental level, I think we are all racist and sexist.

But the special thing about being human is that we have higher level thought. When I see a black person at a party, I acknowledge my bias and remind myself that there is every chance this person would be interesting to get to know.

But not everyone does this, and many people "go on their gut". And ironically, this is one of the most significant us/them divisions; between head-rules- heart and heart-rules-head.

</comment><comment><USER24> The more people I meet, the more I realize there is no "them", only us, us, and more of us.

<comment><USER25> Yet there are differences between people, and between groups of people. Different cultures have different values, and social pressures push those values onto those around them. It's important to recognize those differences.

For example, I recognize that Nazis are people too, but that doesn't mean that I want to support them in our society.

If we can determine that Nazis are bad due to their toxic culture, then that shows that certain cultures are bad. Where do we draw the line? How do we determine what cultures are good and what aren't?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Feel this is very appropriate after the net neutrality thread. Top comment was a very blatent red-vs-blue characterisation, which of course is not the right mentality.

If we want to build a better world, we need to work together instead of target eachother.

<comment> wu-ikkyu >Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery.

-Dr. King

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> In the last part of the article Sapolsky talks about how to overcome us- versus-them dynamics.

I recently came across an organization that seems to be doing some remarkable work along these lines. It's called Better Angels.

[https://better-angels.org/](https://better-angels.org/)

<comment><USER11> >Better Angels Media Network (BAMN)

How ironic that their Network has the same acronym as one of the most violent Anti-Fa groups - By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).

Very nice organization -- I was impressed with their video from Ohio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm just beginning my recovery from whatever makes "us vs. them" turn into "everyone vs. me" at a young age, I guess.

I'm pretty sure this way of thinking isn't being instilled systematically from the top down, but it is happening at a very large scale. What's creating this "us vs. them" which kids often interpret as "everyone vs. me," is that there are so many easy ways out of feeling pain (and thus, ways out of learning how to live as a basic human) that we're in the process of forgetting how to deal with our emotions. We opt for solitary escape early on, because that's how our parents dealt with their issues too (their parents likely believed in pulling up bootstraps, or something). And then we/they continue to opt for escape via any sensory experience available in consumer capitalist society, most recently in socially acceptable life-escape games like Facebook and Twitter. We know it's not an authentic social feed, that it's actually designed to be a game you play with yourself where your social circle makes up the characters. What happens if that real-life game turns against you though, or if your mind simply starts to think they're turning against you? Mass shootings[1], terrorism[2], and Trump[3], I think.

If the horrors of modern American childhood don't happen at home, by the hand of adults who also sought solace from their fears in similar ways, these horrors usually happen in school, where they spend the rest of their time. From fellow classmates who figure out that bullies get their way, and clever bullies get their way even more. Us vs. them happens very early on, and when kids seek out solo escape via phones, games, whatever, well that's the beginning of a neverending search via consumer society for some answer that can allow them to live with the thoughts in their head.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States#Deadliest_shootings)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States#Recent_trends)

[3] [https://i.imgur.com/crG3EeQ.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/crG3EeQ.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER29> On a meta-level, I wonder if this writer was paid for their work to create the article?

If you haven't seen it yet, Nautil.us has a very spotty record of paying their workers over the last year at least.

[https://nwu.org/an-open-letter-from-freelancers-at- nautilus-...](https://nwu.org/an-open-letter-from-freelancers-at-nautilus- magazine/)

<comment><USER30> Does the pay dynamic change if the article was a promotion for a book?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Us vs. them is not just mindset, it is in evolved biology. Overcoming biology is nonsense.

Nevertheless, an intelligent person must be aware of workings of ones biology and physiology and try to correct his behavior.

It is same like riding a bicycle - difficult to learn but once the skill set is acquired it becomes a habit. Meditation is the another name for it.

</comment><comment><USER32> A sidenote on one thing brought up in the article, it's worth noting that the implicit association test (IAT) is of highly dubious utility, despite common use. While it measures _something_ (as does any test), there are very serious questions about what it actually measures, how reliably it measures it, whether what it measures actually correlates with real world bias, etc. There are very good reasons to think that, however clever the test may sound, and however real implicit bias is (its existence is almost indisputable), the test doesn't accurately measure it.

</comment><comment><USER33> We, the people with ADHD are always annoyed by them, people writing 25-page- long articles and we are also very jealous of others capability to read them :-)

<comment><USER30> Internet browsers have text to speech built in. It's really helpful for me.

<comment><USER33> Really? I could never find it. Perhaps you've got an extension of a sort installed. Nice idea anyway, I'll give it a try, thanks! I doubt it sounds great but maybe the things have actually improved since the last time I've tried a text-to-speech tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The article mentions studies done with fMRI on people recognizing "Us" vs. "Them".

Anyone know of similar studies done on neuro-atypical people? I'm particularly interested about studies for people on the autism spectrum and people with anti-social personality disorder.

<comment><USER35> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_syndrome#Social_and_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_syndrome#Social_and_psychological) , right at the end. As I write this, it's footnote 44.

This is also my meta-answer for those who think that even today the us/them mechanism has no value. I've read some accounts of trying to raise children with Williams Syndrome. _Truly_ defaulting to 100% trust is pathologically dangerous even in the safest places you can imagine in the US. People who are imagining that they are open and trusting still don't realize how much they are defending themselves, until they compare themselves to someone who seems to truly lack those mechanisms.

Which doesn't invalidate the idea that we may need less us/them than we currently have, but that doesn't prove or even provide a lot of evidence for the idea that the correct amount is zero.

(Long before the singularity arrives to wipe us all out, we face a greater danger from someone managing to _successfully_ socially engineer the population, and in their infinite wisdom, doing something very, very stupid, such as setting our outgroup trust to 100% all the time, with no way to modify it based on experience, and rendering the entire population trivially exploitable by the first parasite that comes along or something.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Fear not. Facebook has a new goal to bring the world closer together. So that's that sorted then.

</comment><comment><USER37> They reference the implicit bias tests that have now been widely debunked (to the best of my knowledge). This makes me question the other psychology studies they cite as well. The whole psych field is notorious for unreproducibility. How seriously should we take an article that relies on such studies as the basis of its thesis?

</comment><comment><USER38> For what shall I wield a dagger, O Lord?

What can I pluck it out of

Or plunge it into

when you are all the world?

(Devara Dasimayya 10th century Indian poet)

</comment><comment><USER39> It's simple.

Us vs Them happens when there is competition. Competition happens when there is demand for limited valuable resources and not all that demand can be satisfied.

We bring the people of the world and the people within our nations closer together by eliminating absolute poverty.

Eliminating inequality is neither necessary nor even desirable, but the floor of our economies must be such that those sitting upon it enjoy a certain minimum acceptable level of comfort.

<comment><USER40> >>Eliminating inequality is neither necessary nor even desirable, but the floor of our economies must be such that those sitting upon it enjoy a certain minimum acceptable level of comfort.

Behavioral economic research shows this isn't how humans think, particularly Americans. They are naturally competitive regardless of their base level of comfort and "fairness" is inherently very important to them. If one would get 1 unit of free utility and another person gets 5 units of free utility, but the person who gets 1 unit has unilateral control over whether or not anyone gets anything, a startlingly high percentage of people in the 1 unit group will completely axe the deal entirely despite being better off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Slate Star Codex on the same topic:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate- anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything- except-the-outgroup/)

</comment><comment><USER42> thank the good lord Vishnu -- I thought this would be an article about moving past Pink Floyd.

</comment><comment><USER43> Its too late, tech is growing more divided in hiring and its customer base.

Now that google and other tech startups make blacklists of "them" that they want to block promotions and ban from working with people and groups, it seems us vs them is well embraced by the tech community.

And left-leaning google/facebook/youtube/twitter using alt-right as a banner to ban conservatives, then using "Truth masters" like snopes/politifact to confirm a viewpoint as the only truth, then SPLC/RightWingWatch to confirm anyone not spouting the common truth must be outcasts, and all followers of them are also "them". Easier for patreon/kickstarter and other crowdfunding to avoid supporting "them".

Then when programmers are on a list, or a project doesn't support the diversity license, you get banned from github, hackathons or talks.

Tech is sick with "us" vs "them" mentality and its spreading.

<comment><USER44> > left-leaning google/facebook/youtube/twitter using alt-right as a banner to > ban conservatives

What? Citation needed. I haven't heard of any conservatives getting banned from these services due to their political affiliation.

> Then when programmers are on a list, or a project doesn't support the > diversity license, you get banned from github, hackathons or talks.

Again, what? Has this happened? I've never heard of this, and this seems like fairly extreme hyperbole.

What is your argument here? Tech companies are against conservative americans? If reading HN has taught me anything, the tech scene is full of conservatives and libertarians.

<comment><USER45> > What? Citation needed. I haven't heard of any conservatives getting banned > from these services due to their political affiliation.

See: Professor Gad Saad, whose YouTube videos are regularly demonetized. Sometimes they are demonetized while they are processing. Dennis Prager's "Prager University" is currently suing Google for a similar situation with their channel ([https://www.prageru.com/press-release-prager-university- prag...](https://www.prageru.com/press-release-prager-university-prageru- takes-legal-action-against-google-and-youtube-discrimination) and [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/10/14/youtube- rest...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/10/14/youtube-restricts- access-dershowitz-video/BpnEzzb6VS2U3VZU0tetlI/story.html))

> Again, what? Has this happened? I've never heard of this, and this seems > like fairly extreme hyperbole.

There is this tweet from the npm CEO, which I subjectively find quite disgusting. Not that it affects me, but I care about javascript and node, not the identity or background of the speaker. I would even listen to Pol Pot if he gave a good talk on these subjects. [https://twitter.com/izs/status/911105515798720513](https://twitter.com/izs/status/911105515798720513)

Then there was this incident - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868). The link of the submission is no longer relevant, but the first comment is consistent with how I also feel about the subject. It covers what happened as well.

> What is your argument here? Tech companies are against conservative > americans? If reading HN has taught me anything, the tech scene is full of > conservatives and libertarians.

That does not counter the points made. They exist, but they are censored, so it is not in anyone's interest in terms of job security or career advancement, to express their conservative views. Diversity and multiculturalism is essentially the equivalent of halal or kosher now. If it isn't there, seemingly nothing can be done. In general, conservatives these days don't subscribe to these ideas of classification on the basis of various identity properties, but if you do not think this way, there seems to be no place for you. James Damore is a good example of this as well. You are apparently not allowed to think differently, which is sort of ironic, coming from the birthplace of Apple.

<comment><USER46> Would you believe that if I cherry picked a few examples of left-leaning people being censored or harassed out of their company that there exists large, right-leaning groups and companies whose sole purpose is to censor people even slightly left of center?

For example, there are a fair amount of liberal channels being demonetized on youtube as well.

<comment><USER45> You are free to make that case if you believe it has merit. I can reinforce mine with plenty of examples and lots of other evidence. I am for freedom of speech in principle. Nobody should be censored for discussing a political opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is where countries with some sort of mandatory service may have us beat. And maybe it explains why American policy was so focused after the big national wars. I don't think there's a better way to force camaraderie. But then it becomes Us vs Them on the other side of the border.

<comment><USER48> I am very in favor of mandatory service as a strategy to improve nations but I do want to point out that some of the most impressive ones (South Korea and Israel come to mind) are extremely homogenous.

<comment><USER49> I have never understood this idea. Why would it be beneficial to have your citizenry trained to kill?

<comment><USER50> There's several possible benefits:

\- Enemy nations will be somewhat less motivated to invade if they know they will be facing a population that is entirely armed and ready to resist.

\- Putting the population into the service of the country helps build a sense of national cohesion by giving a shared sense of mission and duty.

\- Training the citizens to fight could also be a tool to help prevent dictatorships where the military persecutes the people; a military of citizen- soldiers would be less likely to see their own people as a "them" and more as an "us."

<comment><USER51> A counter point:

I work with some people in Armenia (which has mandatory conscription) - <USER2> from what I've observed that military service made the Us v. Them between Armenians and Azerbaijani stronger than perhaps it would have been without said military service (a drunken encounter between one of said Armenians and an Azerbaijani person outside of Armenia literally came to blows for no real reason I could observe except Us v. Them (well, and alcohol)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I think this phenomenon is the fundamental problem of any two-party system and is one of the issues in American politics. The "us vs them" feeling is a lot less strong when there are multiple parties. This feeling leads to more divisiveness in politics and eventually trickles down to the whole population.

<comment><USER53> It's a catch 22, since that divisiveness strengthens the divide, and that divide strengthens the two parties.

The biggest thing we are missing in the fight against the two party system is confidence.

We _need_ people to be confident that they _can_ elect someone from outside the two parties, and that those people _can_ effect change in politics.

The problem is that individuals see greater participation by others as a dependency for their own participation.

Because people wait for that dependency, they refuse to act until there is a significant participation, and they themselves are no longer needed.

To tell someone otherwise is (or seems to be) to tell them that their vote does not effect the result, which is untrue, and undesirable.

I'm not really sure how to express this problem, or its solution.

<comment><USER54> No, the biggest thing we're missing in the fight against 2-party system is an actual representative voting scheme.

A first-past-the-post [1] voting scheme will always result in 2 parties (assuming it doesn't collapse into a single-party autocracy) due to the spoiler [2] 3rd party vote problem.

It's not psychology but basic probability math and game theory.

Why is not fixed? Because this is the cheapest way for the moneyed elite to both a) wield power, and b) prevent that power from getting concentrated (which could result in a powerful dictator who doesn't listen to them).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the- post_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect)

<comment><USER55> Although I agree with you that the plurality voting system (aka FPTP) is a big problem, I think your theory of why it isn't changed is silly and overlooks the very real difficulties.

One of those difficulties is that there isn't a clear winner among the alternatives. Approval voting, the STV(/IRV), and the Borda Count all have adherents, who disparage the other two.

Worse, none of them is perfect. For example, STV and BC are both susceptible to strategic voting. I recall reading about some municipality that decided to try STV. IIRC, in the very next election they had two competent but extreme candidates at opposite ends of the political spectrum, and a centrist generally regarded as less competent (and who got a much smaller number of first-place votes than either of the others). The electorate was so evenly divided that the centrist won; the voters were so upset with this outcome that they ditched the STV and went back to PV (plurality). Evidently they would have been happier with one of the two extremists, even though that would have been the "wrong" choice for almost half of them.

We could object that none of the three candidates was obviously a great choice, and that if voters really preferred their opposite-extreme candidate over the centrist, they should have voted that way. But it's easy to see why they didn't. We could also object that AV would have given a better result in this case, picking whichever extreme candidate got the most votes and ignoring a widely-disliked centrist. But STV tends to be an easier sell, perhaps because it maintains the notion of "one person, one vote". And finally, we could object that they were too quick to pull the plug and should have given STV another chance, having learned a lesson about the importance of finding competent centrist candidates.

But their conclusion was, they tried an alternative system and it didn't work.

I tend to favor AV personally, as it's relatively resistant to pathological outcomes, but have to admit that it has another problem: it's the least tamper-resistant. With PV and STV, the total number of votes counted shouldn't be greater than the number of voters. AV has a much looser and less useful bound: the total number of votes shouldn't be greater than the _product_ of the number of voters and the number of candidates. That leaves a lot more room for manipulation. In a world where our voting systems are already not as trustworthy as they should be, this is a problem.

<comment><USER56> What's the downside to score/range voting? Voters give each candidate a score (say, from 1-10), and the highest average wins.

I've no particular expertise in this area; I know about it from [http://rangevoting.org/](http://rangevoting.org/)

<comment><USER55> Range voting and approval voting are closely related; approval voting is just the limiting case of range voting where there are only two values on the scale.

My take is that range voting is useful when you have a relatively small number of voters, but once that number gets into the thousands, its advantages over AV fade. Instead of one voter rating one candidate a 7, say, instead what you have is 100 voters of whom 70 vote yes on the candidate and 30 vote no. Once you have enough voters that that effect is statistically reliable, there's no further need for the added complexity of allowing more scale values.

And as you add scale values, tampering gets even easier. How would we notice it if someone went in and changed a bunch of people's 6 votes to 7s?

<comment><USER57> Fraud is a small problem compared to not having Score Voting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Yes, but in my case, Them is pure EEEVIL.

</comment><comment><USER59> Wow, liberal fascism distilled, pretty much a call to arms for the destruction of individual cultures and global imposition of wrongthink. South Park's Death Camp of Tolerance comes to mind. I await the introduction of the reeducation gulags.

Edit: I'm just amazed that people cannot see this guy is blantantly arguing for the exact thing he claims to despise:

'Meanwhile, give the right-of-way to people driving cars with the "Mean people suck" bumper sticker, and remind everyone that we're in this together against Lord Voldemort and House Slytherin.'

He goes on at length about why us and them is bad and then LITERALLY ARGUES FOR an us and them attitude :|

<comment><USER60> Sapolsky is just arguing for us to understand each other a little bit more, recognize unconscious biases, and move towards judging one another on individual merits rather than groupthink. These are basic free-society, founding fathers kind of ideals. I think you're projecting modern (maybe justified) worries onto these old and common ideals.

> and then LITERALLY ARGUES FOR an us and them attitude :|

I'll argue that he doesn't refute his own point by closing with a claim that we're all the US against a THEM of eternal evil embodied. It's like the non- overtoned version of saying "it's all of humanity vs satan".

To say bluntly -- Sapolsky was not arguing for us to strive towards including the principalities of timeless spiritual evil in the _us_ group.

<comment><USER59> OK, but look at the context - out of nowhere we have obvious diversity at all costs propaganda. I'm watching the BBC's Christmas trailer now which involves a brown skinned single father and his daughter. This in no way represents the average in the UK in fact the UK is almost 90% white - so what message is the BBC trying to send? Am I one of the bad guys to recognise the colour of the skin? Because you can bet that whoever came up with the idea certainly had race at the front of their minds. Is the UK really so racist that we deserve to be subjected to this type of manipulation? Is it beyond the realms of possibility that the people behind this agitprop are in fact the very same nefarious forces you mention?

<comment><USER61> >This in no way represents the average in the UK in fact the UK is almost 90% white - so what message is the BBC trying to send?

"Hey brown people. You're not being completely ignored by our society. When we have to make decisions based on _arbitrary_ characteristics like race, we prefer to occasional choose people you might be able to relate to on the bases of colour, rather than trying to appeal to some obviously incorrect notion that we should only relate to 'the average UK citizen' (which doesn't exist)."

Or maybe those actors just worked best? Or maybe they drew straws. Either way, there's no reason to believe that the skin colour of the actors on your screen is some kind of manipulation/propaganda against you. That's an irrational leap.

>Am I one of the bad guys to recognise the colour of the skin?

No. You're one of the bad guys for failing to recognize that the colour of the skin is an arbitrary choice and thus not relevant. The only thing about a person you should consider relevant is their ability to make good decisions.

The BBC will not occupy any moral high ground by using only white actors. (Which is what you're saying they _should_ do, on account of some frankly stupid appeal to 'averages.' The 'average' UK citizen is riddled with disease and missing most of their limbs. So maybe don't try to tacitly substitute 'average' for 'ideal/typical/most common'. And why does the BBC has any obligation to represent any of these anyway?)

Maybe that's a harsh-seeming way of putting it, but that's the logical alternative you imply by using crappy metrics.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


First China-U.K. Freight Train Departs as Xi Seeks to Lift Trade - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/china-starts-freight-train-to-london-as-xi-promotes-trade-ties <comment><USER2> Some more detail articles about current China <-> Europe regular train connection (actually it goes weekly to Poland): [http://postandparcel.info/56547/news/innovation/dhl- launches...](http://postandparcel.info/56547/news/innovation/dhl-launches- weekly-train-link-from-china-to-poland/)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/06/28/what- the-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/06/28/what-the-newly- branded-china-europe-silk-road-trains-really-mean/#22e225e1d852)

It make sense for goods that sending them by air is too expensive, but they are too time sensitive to send them by ship. It takes a day by plane, 14 days by train, 45 days by the ship. I would expect in good scenario that train would be somewhat similar popular as air, but nowhere near close volume as by sea.

<comment><USER2> Some price estimates: (very crude, but shows magnitude of price)

Rail is 4 times more expensive than by sea. Air is at least 6 times more expensive than rail, but can be even 18 times more expensive if payload is heavy.

Cost of shipping 40′ HC container:

\- by sea: $1,600

\- by train: $6,800

\- by air, light, so you pay for volume: 4.6 USD / kg, 40 ft got volume 67.7 m3 * 143 kg / m3 ~= 9 tons, $41,400

\- by air, heavy, so you pay for real weight: 4.6 USD / kg, 40tf can be 27tons, $124,200

Shanghai <-> Gdynia, Poland: [http://www.transportchiny.pl/ceny_transportu_z_chin.php](http://www.transportchiny.pl/ceny_transportu_z_chin.php)

Shanghai <–> Małaszewicze, Poland [http://gocargo.pl/czy-transport-koleja-z- chin-jest-oplacalny...](http://gocargo.pl/czy-transport-koleja-z-chin-jest- oplacalny/)

By Air: [http://www.chinaimportal.com/blog/air-freight-import- china-g...](http://www.chinaimportal.com/blog/air-freight-import-china-guide/)

Container: [https://www.searates.com/reference/equipment/3/](https://www.searates.com/reference/equipment/3/)

Excuse me for non-English links, but that was the easiest what I can find.

<comment><USER3> Pollution

\- Air cargo - 0.8063 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

\- Truck - 0.1693 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

\- Train - 0.1048 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

\- Sea freight - 0.0403 kg of CO2 per Ton-Mile

So I see this competing with air freight, not sea.

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

<comment><USER4> But the ship route China <-> London is a lot more miles than the train.

<comment> torrent-of-ions I would have thought so too, but I'm not sure. Does anyone have any figures on this?

<comment><USER5> no figures, but there is the northern route (north of russia) so getting to europe via sea is pretty direct. Thank global warming for that!

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/oct/05/melting-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/oct/05/melting- arctic-ice-supertankers)

<comment><USER6> > the northern route could gradually be opened for four to six months a year

*There's a northern route that is only open for a portion of the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would guess that this is rolling out just for the PR, the sheer number of trains needed to replace one decent sized container ship just makes this all prohibitive to ever replace much sea freight plus launching when there is a glut of container ships floating around as well, which is keeping the price lower than most ship owners can breakeven. Ok so it's quicker, but it's not that quick.

The only winners would be the goods owners who are winning form short term lower prices - is that enough for a long term business?

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I really can't see this being a success for anything more than PR. If you need it ASAP, you're going to use airfreight. If you don't you're going to have it by sea. I don't see much of a need for something in between those two timeframes. Anyone specialised in logistics care to comment if there is an actual market here?

<comment><USER9> I'm not into logistics, but following this out of curiosity. In Germany this started in 2008, and didn't make sense to me either. Got aware of it because the local press covered it. (Sorry for the german links) [http://www.mopo.de/peking-hamburg-container-express-der- mons...](http://www.mopo.de/peking-hamburg-container-express-der-monster-zug- aus-dem-reich-der-mitte-19904260) , [http://www.mopo.de/-trans-eurasia- express-hier-kommt-der-xxl...](http://www.mopo.de/-trans-eurasia-express-hier- kommt-der-xxl-zug-aus-china-19627262) Then over the years, it was busisness as usual, slowly expanding: [http://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/dienstleister/china- zug-deuts...](http://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/dienstleister/china-zug-deutsche- bahn-halbiert-transportzeit/6613850.html) , [http://www.dbschenker.com/ho- de/news_media/presse/corporate-...](http://www.dbschenker.com/ho- de/news_media/presse/corporate-news/aktuelles/2728094/china_zug.html), [https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article118648469/Neue- Bahnver...](https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article118648469/Neue- Bahnverbindung-nach-China-ist-in-Betrieb.html) , [https://www.welt.de/regionales/duesseldorf/article126318669/...](https://www.welt.de/regionales/duesseldorf/article126318669/Chinas- Praesident-kommt-fuer-einen-Zug-nach-Duisburg.html) , [http://www.transa.dbschenker.de/log-transa- de/start/China_Co...](http://www.transa.dbschenker.de/log-transa- de/start/China_Containerzug.html) , [http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/von-westeuropa-nach- ch...](http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/von-westeuropa-nach-china-die- rollende-seidenstrasse-1.2454706) ,[https://www.deutschland.de/de/topic/wirtschaft/globalisierun...](https://www.deutschland.de/de/topic/wirtschaft/globalisierung- welthandel/die-transeurasische-landbruecke)

The gist of all that german garble is that it is about twice the speed of sea freight, measured "door to door", while costing only half as much as air freight, but twice that of sea freight. co² emission is calculated as half of that of sea freight, and 25 times less than air freight. In 2016 they shipped somewhat over 40.000 containers in about 400 trains, which carry about 50 containers per train.

The NYT covered this in 2013 with an interactive feature: [http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/07/21/silk- road/](http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/07/21/silk-road/) [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/global/hauling- ne...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/global/hauling-new-treasure- along-the-silk-road.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

hth

almost forgotten: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans- Eurasia_Logistics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Eurasia_Logistics) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing-Xinjiang- Europe_Rail...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing-Xinjiang- Europe_Railway)

<comment><USER10> That would mean that airfreight is only 4 times as expensive as shipping? I'd expect it to be at least a magnitude more expensive, if not more.

I guess half as much as airfreight means that it's still considerably more expensive than shipping. But for 14 days vs 30-45 days it might well be worth it.

<comment><USER9> That depends on the shipped goods, i think? One calculation was that of a 15 inch notebook at 2kg weight, they wrote: 28 days per ship, at 2,50 € and 184 kg co². By air 3 to 4 days at 23 € and 4950 kg co² emission. By train 17 to 18 days at 5,50 € and 270 kg co². But that is for a laptop, packaged in a specific volume with that weight. They also ship tires, automobile parts, shoes, clothing, textiles, whatnot.... in both directions btw. BMW ships parts from .de to .cn

<comment><USER10> Yep, air freight is generally by weight, shipping by volume. Electronics are already sent via air, saving $3 shipping on a $1500 item doesn't make much sense. Taking the UK as an example, 70% of non-EU exports by value go via Heathrow. Would expect the value to be similar for China. By volume it's probably low single digits for airfreight, by value likely >50%.

Low value items and very heavy items are currently not viable via airfreight, that's probably where trains can be profitable. If you produce clothes your only options are to either do so in Europe (there's a lot of production in Turkey) and have it close by, or produce in Asia and wait 40 days for every order. Cutting that time for a premium could make a lot of economic sense.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I was thinking this would be useful for fashion.

If you suddenly find a particular style/colour of item is popular and selling out it might make sense to get more items shipped via train and have them arrive in 2 weeks.

If you have to put it on a boat and wait 6 weeks you may have missed your chance to sell that item (e.g., people are moving on from summer to autumn clothing, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Round-trip 4 weeks is OK; it will be interesting to see the packet loss rate in this service.

The roads around here (Helsinki, Finland) used to be congested by trailer trucks transporting new Japanese cars from the harbour in Hanko across border to St. Petersburg.

Bothered by the flow of trucks, I asked why didn't they send the cars across from Japan over Trans-Siberian railway? I was told that too many cars disappeared on the way. In fact, sometimes a whole train disappeared.

Now Russia has built a suitable harbour of its own closer to St. Petersburg so that the flow of new cars doesn't need to come to the ringroads of Helsinki (and, I expect, the economic situation means fewer cars are sold there).

</comment><comment><USER13> China, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France uses the standard gauge of 1,435mm but Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan has 1520mm. I guess they are shifting wagons at the borders of China and Kazakhstan and Belarus and Poland. Or are the wagons mixed-gauge?

<comment><USER14> Quick wikipedia yields this:

 _It has been reported that, for example, when containers are shipped by a "direct train" from China to Europe, it is only containers, and not the railcars, which move from China's railway network to that of Kazakhstan. At the border station at Khorgos, two trains (the Chinese standard-gauge one and the Kazakh Russian-gauge one) would stand side by side at parallel tracks, while the cranes would move the containers from one train to the other in as short time as 47 minutes._

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-of- gauge#Containerisatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-of- gauge#Containerisation)

 _A break of gauge needs to be crossed when entering Mongolia from China (or Russia directly from China, if traveling via Manzhouli /Zabaykalsk), and then another one when leaving Belarus for Poland._

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans- Eurasia_Logistics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Eurasia_Logistics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is about opening up Central Asia to China soft power. Rail is the only means Central Asia going to trade (export/import) anything, and strengthens China's West, Xinjiang, etc.

<comment><USER16> This, and other geopolitical implications. The 'New Silk Road' effort has been China's focus for a while, and envisions two corridors along which overland trade can flow: the _status quo_ through Russia, and an alternate one to the south that avoids Russia and remains resilient should their partnership sour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome. Brings us all closer together. Alternate transportation systems for the win. Probably a good hedge against Suez Canal issues and Souh China Sea contention.

</comment><comment><USER18> While 200 containers is not much compared to a container ship it is sufficient to carry all of the material for a Combat Brigade :-)

More seriously though, it seems like an awesome rail trip if you can convince them to pull your private rail car.

<comment><USER19> You can already travel from China to London (or more likely in reverse) by train with a few changes, it's definitely worthwhile.

<comment><USER14> Interesting. How do you go about buying tickets for such trips?

<comment><USER20> I highly recommend looking through this site which extensively covers travel by train. [http://www.seat61.com/](http://www.seat61.com/)

I've travelled by rail through Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. It's not always easy to buy (cheap) tickets online or in advance outside of Russia but it's worth taking the risk and buying in-country for the experience of the 3 + day journeys

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Duisburg/Germany now has eight (!) trains per week from China.

[http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-07/23/c_135534991.htm](http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-07/23/c_135534991.htm)

</comment><comment><USER22> This has been going on with Germany for quite some time now (years) and is expanding in Germany, so it seems to work. I also found it interesting though more goods are shipped from China, a significant amount of goods is shipped to China.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know how the train compares to ships wrt CO2/kg shipped? I'm sure the train comes out on top, but by how much?

Also, how frequently could one of those trains run?

<comment><USER24> Not sure about CO2 impact, but one problem is that these trains are running pretty empty back to china (china doesn't want to import so much from Europe by rail). I think they are running 50 trains a year, with a heavy subsidy to make it affordable (half the cost).

<comment><USER25> Do the freight ships do the same? What do they bring back with them?

<comment><USER24> Good question. I know freight charges are cheaper going to china than coming from china, so I guess there is a demand mismatch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What I found interesting is that it still takes 15 days for a freight train to do the journey.

With the recent $500 billion plan for high-speed rail network in China, surely it also makes sense to modernize this Asia<->Europe track? For example building a dedicated track with standard gauge in Kazakhastan, Russia, or developing a more powerful locomotive dedicated to this.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ryan from Flexport here. Been trying to sell rail freight from China to the EU since start of 2016 with no luck. It's too much more expensive than sea freight and too much slower than air freight. We will keep plugging though because we think its super cool.

<comment><USER28> Why drum up business for a dictator led authoritarian government that suppresses its own people and other countries and pollutes the environment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The advantage might come if you regard the railcars as a stream of product on it's way to your warehouse, rather than a single delivery. So high latency, but the bandwidth is respectable once it starts. :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Offtopic: How far are we from shortening this trip from 15 days to say, 12 or 10 days?

15 days is half a month. But if this could be shortened to 10 days, it is 3 regular shipment in a month.

For someone like Apple, this could be extremely cost efficient. Rather then paying the high price to book every single possible fright from China, they could now do it via train, at least to everywhere in Europe.

<comment><USER31> The article says 18 days and 12000 km.

That's just ~28 km/h on average. I ride my bicycle faster than that :).

<comment><USER32> That seems like a very low speed while the train is actually in motion, although apparently[1] american freight trains average around ~40 km/h. I would guess mostly it is various delays that keeps the average that low, and it seems most data is just distance/time estimates, not actual averages of instantaneous speed measurement.

[1] A bit old but fairly indicative as far as I can tell: [https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...](https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/transportation_statistics_annual_report/2010/html/chapter_02/table_04_33.html)

<comment><USER31> [http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/01/28/why- china...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/01/28/why-china-europe- silk-road-rail-transport-is-growing-fast/#626922e7f24b)

However, this article says:

"The exit customs inspection for the Su'Man'Ou trains is done on-location in the bonded zone. The next time these containers will need to go undergo a customs inspection will be at the border of the EU, and they will typically not be opened until they arrive at their destination."

and

"These cargo relays are generally very simple procedures: the incoming train and the outgoing train are lined up side by side and a crane moves the containers from one to the other. At Khorgos Gateway, a new junction on the Silk Road Economic Belt on the border of Kazakhstan and China, this transfer can be done in just 47 minutes."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The new silk road is a decent project, but of course it's not purely for China to dump it's products abroad. Besides, I believe it's a matter of time before anti-China sentiment in Europe will be like the American-version propagated by Trump.

</comment><comment><USER34> Although it might be quicker than sea freight, if the frequency is less it will end up waiting too long to start its journey in the first place.

Speed and frequency are both important, unless you have the liberty to synchronise.

</comment><comment><USER35> Such an article without a map and figures? Could modern journalism get any worse

</comment><comment><USER36> Who would be a British factory worker? You pay your taxes which the government immediately spends on infrastructure to help offshore your job!</comment>


A new wave of Silicon Valley companies is bringing live socializing online - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/technology/31chat.html?ex=1364616000&en=8b122ccd294b2baa&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I know these things are cool. But I can't help but crack up to see this article.

Really? Instant communication over Internet? Chat! IM?

I want more focus on the innovations in Google Docs etc.

Multi user interfaces stretch my perception of what to use my computer for. Multi user apps have yet to really break into the mainstream outside of games and IM. Should be interesting to see the explosion as "comet" is starting to become easier to do than not.

Just wait till it in something trendy like rails :)

</comment><comment><USER3> was surprised to see the word "imbedded" misspelled in the NYT ( not to nit pick )</comment>


Is Myst still one of the worst games ever? - <AUTHOR> https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/03/02/is-myst-still-one-of-the-worst-games-ever/ <comment><USER2> From [https://www.filfre.net/2020/02/myst-or-the-drawbacks-to- succ...](https://www.filfre.net/2020/02/myst-or-the-drawbacks-to-success/)

> Myst would prove to be one of the most polarizing games in history, loved > and hated in equal measure. Even today, everyone seems to have a strong > opinion about it, whether they've actually played it or not.

> ... And yet, for all the love it's inspired, the game's detractors are if > anything even more committed than its proponents. For a huge swath of > gamers, Myst has become the poster child for a certain species of boring, > minimally interactive snooze-fest created by people who have no business > making games — and, runs the spoken or unspoken corollary, played by people > who have no business playing them.

67 comments on the filfre post I quoted, from 24 days ago, at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22392469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22392469) .</comment>


ItsTrending Shows Popular Facebook Shared Items - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/25/itstrending-shows-popular-facebook-shared-items/

<comment><USER2> Any sort of analytics that could be drawn from this?

<comment><USER3> he's not actually touching the data, just using the facebook "recommendations" plugin here: [http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/recomm...](http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/recommendations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Facebook did a nice job. Just enter URL & click get code. I got CNN.com & NYTimes.com on my blog in <1 minute. Check out: www.si-innovations.com (look on the right side after some scroll-downs), not to self-promote, just to demonstrate the ease of use.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's really scary to think about the consequence of this... Google may become irrelevant in <1 year...

<comment><USER5> > Google may become irrelevant in <1 year...

I'm not a betting man but I'd wager $1000 that FB will not make Google irrelevant in 1 year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Beautiful, simple design. Nice job.</comment>


In Praise of Chorded Input - <AUTHOR> http://v21.io/blog/chorded-input/ <comment><USER2> The older I get, the less I like key chording. This is particularly exacerbated by the lack of a common key chording scheme between Windows, Linux, and OSX. It becomes a mental stutter as I have to constantly override my muscle memory. It's probably why I like VIM editor schemes so much - there's significantly less chording required.

I've also noticed the preference come up when playing games. Ideally, I would simply assign additional abilities to modified keys, but for the life of me, it's just simpler to assign them, one to one, to keys on the keyboard. My hand needs to move around the keyboard a bit more, but it has to contort a lot less.

Also, it's somewhat telling that some the fastest typists in the world don't use shift - they use caps lock.

ref. [http://www.seanwrona.com/typing.php](http://www.seanwrona.com/typing.php) the final paragraph

<comment><USER3> I don't doubt the report that Wrona is using caps lock instead of shift, but it baffles me. How did he manage to make that faster? I only use left shift, which is pretty similar except he has to hit twice as many keys to accomplish the same thing.

<comment><USER2> I've mucked around with it, so speaking only from that mucking it offers two things:

Your hand is not anchored to the shift button. You can use one finger for the first press of capslock, and another for the second, based on where the previous and next letters are (this is a reference to the typist using any finger to hit any letter).

Using shift is still three actions: for the shift button it's a press and hold followed by a timed release, plus a press of the target letter. Given this, the "press press press" rhythm matches the rest of the typing flow better than "hold press release".

<comment><USER3> I don't buy this answer. If the shift button is three actions then the capslock is four.

Shift: Press -> hold -> release

Lock: Press -> release -> press -> release

Both cases require timing. I'm not convinced he's faster because of capslock, he seems to be faster in spite of it.

I also use a hybrid typing style. For example, the word "server". The first time I strike the "e" with my middle finger and the second "e" is with my ring finger, freeing my middle finger to type the final "r" because my index finger is still at the lower row after typing "v". Surely he uses this style of non- traditional touch typing for words like "Azure, Qatar, Zaire," but I think the flexibility of finger choice is the secret to success, not the capslock key.

<comment><USER2> So, I think the bigger difference is that there is no timing required on the release (short of "don't trigger auto-repeat"). Just as we (assumption alert) don't care about the timing of releasing the letter or number keys while typing, they don't worry about the release timing of the "shift/capslock" key when they're typing. To them, it's just like typing 'wow' or anything else with a repeating letter.

I also imagine it makes typing out acroynyms a lot simpler as well. For example, I hold down left shift when I type NASA (left shift since I hit the 'n' with my right hand), and contort my left hand while being sure not to release shift to finish the word.

In any case, it's mostly my own conjecture - day-to-day I can't type very accurately without relying on coming back to home; without using the same fingers for the same letters all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Chorded input is rare these days - the movement of software to touchscreen > devices argues against it.

Multitouch gestures _are_ a form of chorded input, no? And one we've greatly under-explored, IMHO.

Probably mostly because people tend to be using either touchscreens that are mobile, or touch pads that are rather small, and so you can only fit one hand's worth of fingers on the digitizer, and one hand's fingers can't (without training) do too many different things at the same time. So mostly we come up with gestures that move some or all the fingers of the hand in concert.

But if you had a digitizer surface that had room for _two_ hands, you could do _a lot_ with that. Moving a finger of one hand in a circle while the other swipes toward/away from it; "unfolding" something by interlacing eight fingers in a line and sliding them to opposite ends of the digitizer; etc.

(I think Apple could easily introduce these for people who own both an iPad and a Mac. It seems their Sidecar support is already moving toward this, as it sends native touchpad input to apps—acting, in est, as a large Bluetooth multitouch digitizer—rather than just doing HLE emulation + transmission of the particular gestures possible in macOS currently.)

And sure, that all sounds a bit mystery-meat at first—no clear affordances. But it's not any more mystery-meat than voice navigation is. Voice navigation is a "grammar" on top of regular spoken-language words; you expect the user to learn language at some point. Similarly, a "vocabulary" of multitouch gestures could all be taught to the user at some point—even practiced in an OS-shipped program resembling a typing tutor. (Back when mice first became prominent, OSes shipped with mouse-requiring games specifically to serve as mousing tutors!) Then you just have to teach the users visual/symbolic mnemonics for these gestures; and then you can use those symbols as accelerator indicators in your regular menus and label text.

(Oh, and don't get me started on what's possible with a depth-of-field sensing camera, ala Windows Hello. I'm constantly surprised that competition isn't already heating up to be the first OS to natively support American Sign Language watched-gesture input.)

<comment><USER5> Yup, exactly this. The fact that most iPad "creativity" apps (looking at Procreate, Notability, Photoshop, etc) are using essentially the same set of interactions as we have on the Mac at the moment (limited to a single input method at a time) means that despite having "10x" the available "interaction bandwidth", we are using only 1/10th of it. Gestures are problematic because of their lack of discoverability, but there are definitely other (even simpler) ways to achieve this (can't really say too much since I'm working on a product in this space).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > But it's not just music software: pretty much all the joys I've listed can > be used to explain people getting so into learning Vim or Emacs.

Eh, the reason why I'm into modal editing is precisely that it doesn't require much chording. That's also why I've configured my keyboard to write all the ascii printable symbols without chording, and shift is sticky so I don't need to chord it to write a capital I.

I could imagine having a handful of simple chords, but not much more. The problem I see with chording is that it imposes timing restrictions that allow room for misinterpretation when you're typing things too quickly. And generally I find it more difficult & tense to press more than one key simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been searching relentlessly for a qwerty chording solution that works for me. I was hoping to find something useful here, but there's only a couple of Wikipedia links that I've already scoured through. QMK firmware seems like a good solution, but it's only available on DIY mechanical keyboards or expensive ergonomic keyboards. There are a few hacks out there for other keyboards, but I don't want to brick my daily driver.

If anybody has a solution for custom chords on a qwerty that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars I'd love to hear it!

<comment><USER7> For English, Plover is the obvious choice. For other European languages, I have a frozen work-in-progress called Qweyboard on GitHub.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I picked up this half keyboard for $30 at an embedded conference in Boston probably 15 years ago. It's amazing how quickly your brain 'gets' it and your typing speed ramps up: [https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/](https://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/)

I'm guessing at some point they got approved as an assistance device, because now they sell for $500. Presumably it's insurance companies that are paying at this rate.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if the advent of VR/AR will eventually result in some form of chorded keyboard input gaining widespread popularity. AR/VR devices are often used in situations where you don't have access to a physical keyboard, and some standalone VR headsets already feature early forms of hand tracking which could trivially allow for simple chorded input once they are a bit more refined.

Its possible people will just get used to typing on simulated virtual keyboards, like they did for on-screen keyboards on mobile. However, simulated QWERTY input in VR is significantly worse than it is on mobile, since unlike on mobile there's no tactile feedback at all; not even the rudimentary feedback of your fingers touching a flat surface. Whether that added inconvenience is enough to overcome the friction of users needing to learn a whole new input method to type with though is uncertain. In the short term I don't think it is, but long term? Hard to say.

</comment><comment><USER10> I used a BAT ([http://xahlee.info/kbd/bat_keyboard.html](http://xahlee.info/kbd/bat_keyboard.html)) long ago for enough time that I was able to type _prose_ at about 50wpm. For that use, it was quite decent - especially if you were using some system that required a lot of mousing and didn't have good keyboard control options. There, having one hand always on the mouse while the other could provide input was faster and less frustrating than current keyboard+mouse. What was not at all good was programming. Symbols often require modifier keys; but on a chorded keyboard like the BAT, that meant two chords for each symbol: the chord to set the modifier, and the chord to choose the actual key that goes with the modifier.

Still, I think there's a lot of room for improvement of human interfaces (at least until we hopefully someday get neural interfaces which bypass hands and even eyes).

</comment><comment><USER11> I think chorded input is good, and I dislike touch screens. I also thought of using Hollerith chording for entering text using a numeric keypad (although a separate key will be needed for a space), rather than what most things use for entering text using a numeric keypad, which is worse, I think.

<comment><USER11> A keyboard with only a few keys for entering text is not a substitute for a full keyboard, but may be useful for small devices that only have a few keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> People are still building chorded input devices. This was shown at CES:

[https://www.charachorder.com/](https://www.charachorder.com/)

Mobile devices lack good input methods. There's a possibility they might prove useful for those on the go.

<comment><USER2> This looks less like a chording keyboard (which tend to have fewer inputs), and more an evolution on the "Data Hand" keyboard (which allows access to every character by moving fingers in different directions).

ref. [http://octopup.org/computer/datahand](http://octopup.org/computer/datahand)

<comment><USER12> It looks like both. You can move keys in multiple directions, but you also get chorded input:

" Over 17 Billion (17.1529*10^12) possible chord combinations per profile."

<comment><USER2> You can do the same with a standard keyboard and drivers - such as plover, autohotkey, etc.

36! is a pretty large number as well. ;)

This isn't an attempt to denigrate the product, it does look nice. One of my favorite chorded input methods was the old steam controller text input that combined 8 positions on the left stick with the right 4 face buttons of a standard controller. But it's design is closer to a standard keyboard than chorded keyboard.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but I don't want to carry a standard keyboard with me.

That's why I mentioned usage with mobile devices.

I'd like to sit on a park bench on a nice spring day and write my blog with my phone.

Starbucks, library, picnic table, deli, ....

<comment><USER2> I would personally think that the use of joysticks would not work exceptionally well with a "park bench" scenario, but that's me. I'd probably look into the Twiddler, or one of the single-key-per-finger options myself.

Personal preference and all that. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Plan 9's acme editor uses mouse chords: select text with the left mouse button, then while holding LMB click the middle mouse button to cut. Click and hold LMB to select an input point, then right-click to paste the text from the clipboard. To copy text, you simply select with LMB, click MMB to cut, then immediately click RMB to paste back into the same spot while also maintaining the clipboard copy.

I use it daily and it is pretty convenient. There are other chords too, but those are the big ones.

<comment><USER14> Inspired wholesale by the same feature in Oberon.

And one of the things that makes me miss proper three button mice.

<comment><USER11> I also want a proper three button mouse; I don't use the wheel and would rather have three full buttons.

<comment><USER6> I'd prefer wheel _and_ third button.

I don't understand why mouse buttons need to be so large. Indeed, keys are much smaller, and the thumb buttons in mice are still much smaller. That's not a problem. Every mouse I've had has a comfortable spot between the two main buttons and the wheel where you could fit the third button..

<comment><USER15> I use a Ploopy that's been modified to run QMK (just needs a ISP flash, nothing crazy) and has my onboard chording engine. It's a mess, but having 2^n inputs and a trackball is very fun and hacky :)

[https://www.ploopy.co/](https://www.ploopy.co/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Of course lots of musical instruments require chorded inputs. Pianos, guitars, trumpets, most woodwinds, even trombones.

</comment><comment><USER17> I can add to this praise. I have been using key-chord-mode in emacs for the last 7 years. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER18> We need foot pedals for Dvorak/QWERTY switching _in charwise situ_ … virtuosos of the finger arts, please stand up. And modes, obvi prose v code.

asking important question, can wha-wha be incorporated? Markdown, are you there?

</comment><comment><USER19> Many keyboards support NKRO today, so it should be possible to have chords defined. for little used keys (some people don't use numpad much for example) it could be very interesting.

</comment><comment> trey-jones Emacs users will agree. Indeed I am 100% convinced that being an Emacs user enabled me to pick up the piano and be better at it than I was the last time I played 20 years ago.

<comment><USER20> This is fascinating and something I've wondered about. It'd make for an interesting study, and actually, I wonder if you know about any research that has been done on this subject. I'd be curious to know if the data backs up the intuition!

<comment> trey-jones I don't know of any research; I base this statement purely on the intuition that piano shouldn't feel this natural to me. Typing itself could account for it, but I think Emacs has more piano-like dexterity requirements than typing in general. Another variable is that while I had't played the piano in a long time, I have done other musical things, and so just being a better, more experienced musician could also have an influence.</comment></comment></comment>


Why is the US wealthier than Europe? Give credit to its cities. - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-is-the-us-wealthier-than-europe-give-credit-to-its-cities/2012/04/17/gIQABfOfOT_blog.html

<comment><USER2> Could be effect rather than cause.</comment>


Ask HN: YC Work At a Startup advice? - <AUTHOR>

I applied (and got invited!) to the YCombinator Work At a Startup event next week!  It has always been a dream of mine to work at a startup (on the developer side) in the bay and/or SV, and I'm finally taking one step closer to making that a reality.
I'll be flying in for my first time to SF and really have no idea what to expect or do.  I'd love to get more plugged in with the community and spend my day meeting as many cool people as possible.
Any advice on what to do for the day would be awesome.
(edit: spelling) <comment><USER2> I really wanted to attend ... but couldn't justify flying out the Bay area for a 3 hour event. If you could post your impressions of the event to this thread, I'd appreciate that!

To do in the Bay Area: Food: In-N-Out, Patxi's Chicago Style Pizza, Bob's Donuts Meetups: Go to meetup.com and sign up to attend a meetup or two. Places: If this is your first trip to Silicon Valley, make sure you go to SF, Palo Alto and Mountain View. You can take the Caltrain to visit all three. Sightseeing: Muir Woods, Santa Cruz (meh), do walk the Golden Gate Bridge if you get a chance

Have fun!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm surprised this post has received no comments or advice from Silicon Valley founders. I believe the competition for talent is fierce and most companies would love to have more developers readily available to join their companies.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm attending as a dev myself, I look forward to meeting you. Did you attend any of the meetups this last weekend, or last night?</comment>


Trump Tower Funded by Rich Chinese Who Invest Cash for Visas - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-07/trump-tower-financed-by-rich-chinese-who-invest-cash-for-visas <comment><USER2> While I am no fan of Trump, I don't think there I understand the attack angle here. This program is a government sponsored program to get foreign money into US based capital development programs. They don't get ownership or equity of the resultant buildings, and the only thing they do get is a visa into the country. I understand there are security risks, but I don't think anyone who is raising funds via this method should even concern themselves with that. This is a government sponsored and run program, all the developer is doing is trying to raise funds to build their project at the best rate possible. If there is a security concern then the people who need to be concerned with it are the government officials who are processing and clearing the applicants.

Essentially I read this as Trump's subsidiary used a government program to raise funds, and it turns out the government can't even be trusted to do a proper security screen.

<comment><USER3> Donald Trump has anti-immigration stance. A couple of things on his website are not compatible with giving visas to people for money.

[https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration- reform](https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform)

> Real immigration reform puts the needs of working people first – not wealthy > globetrotting donors.

> Requirement to hire American workers first. Too many visas, like the H-1B, > have no such requirement. In the year 2015, with 92 million Americans > outside the workforce and incomes collapsing, we need companies to hire from > the domestic pool of unemployed. Petitions for workers should be mailed to > the unemployment office, not USCIS.

<comment><USER4> no - Donald Trump is anti-ILLEGAL-immigration. The word a lot of people 'conveniently' leave out to serve their own political bias.

I agree with the other two items. ESPECIALLY the H-1B debacle that is currently going on...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Donald Trump Says "China" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDrfE9I8_hs&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDrfE9I8_hs&feature=youtu.be)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone else hate the white background of the title font? I've seen that look before, but only when my css was screwed up. I don't see how anyone could intentionally choose that.</comment>


New Grad vs. Senior Dev - <AUTHOR> https://ericlippert.com/2020/03/27/new-grad-vs-senior-dev/ <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like this is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22708094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22708094) which is now on the front page. I didn't see it earlier, my apologies!</comment>


Occupy Yosemite - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/occupyyosemite

<comment><USER2> I am not sure how this is Hacker News, but assuming it is, I feel Yosemite is such a treasure, and so fragile, that the last thing I want to see are people tromping around it with no rangers around.

Sounds like a very bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> >> Visitors do not need the government to use nature, including Yosemite.

Sure, but you do expect rescue crews to be dispatched when you get you're sorry ass lost in the wilderness.

</comment><comment><USER4> This government shutdown joke will be a backfire at the White House the more they pull off more of this nonsense.

Not only people are pissed off that these stunts, but they will also recognize that we are probably better off with less non-essential governmental functions...which will be the ironic unintended consequences.

<comment><USER5> I thought that this was exactly the intention of the Tea Party's antics...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The tea party is shuting down the government to try to force the defunding of Obamacare, but then they're downplaying the inconvenience they're causing. I don't understand the tactic.</comment>


U.S. hits Scotch whisky, Italian cheese, French wine with 25% tariffs - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wto-aircraft-drink-food/u-s-hits-scotch-whisky-italian-cheese-french-wine-with-25-tariffs-idUSKBN1WH2G7 <comment><USER2> Luckily it's not French cheese and Italian wine...

<comment><USER3> Not so lucky, I think. Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano are amazing cheeses that are already relatively expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Was at Total Wine today, and they were in the process of pulling French wine off -- likely for repricing.</comment>


Ask News.YC: How do you handle dispute resolution between 2 founders? - <AUTHOR>

My startup has 2 founders: I'm the Woz, and my cofounder is the Jobs.  We have been working under the assumption that it'll be 50/50, at least since the 3 founders that didn't do anything left.  It's seemed to work well in terms of both of us feeling like we're pulling our fair share and aren't being cheated.<p>However, we just spoke to a lawyer about incorporation and corporate structures, and he said "That'll make for an interesting agreement for dispute resolution."  I'm curious how other companies in this situation have handled it.  I know Apple brought in Ron Wayne as the 3rd founder to act as a tiebreaker - how did the Reddits do it?  Any other examples? <comment><USER2> I personally wouldn't do anything but 50/50. Even if it is 49.9/50.1 you are saying that the person with the higher % is inherently better, and this can leak into the dynamics of the startup in so many ways. Lawyers like to point out things like this, but they aren't the entrepreneurs.

I can tell you from experience that if you have the right co-founder, 50/50 is no problem. If there is a disagreement, however minor, you talk it out until one person convinces the other. This pretty much never happened in my case, by the way.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Listen to epi and pg on this one. Your lawyer is nuts.

It just shouldn't be an issue. If you or your partner are afraid it might be, you've got the wrong co-founder. You will eventually bring in others and the potential tie will be broken--but for the next six months to two years (before the first VC round happens), your course should already be plotted. No important decisions should come up that require more than a "for the minutes" vote, because you already have discussed things and share the same goals.

You've already discussed whether you'd be willing to sell early for some reasonable some, right? That's the big one.

Sure, you might have the "do we go for the hundred million user consumer market and burn money like it's going out of style, or the half million user enterprise market and try to make a little money" conundrum that seems so inevitable in web apps...but, as others have noted, if you end up on different sides of this one, you simply can't work productively together...and you probably can't afford to do both.

Everything else is execution...and it's stuff you should have already hashed out and agreed (roughly) on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know another startup that was faced with a similar issue (they have since been acquired, proving that this does, indeed, work)--they decided to split it 49.9/50.1 with the person who thought of the idea first getting the majority.

Naturally if you have thousands of shares, just take one from the person who's going to get less equity and give it to yourself (assuming all shares have equal voting rights).

Another alternative is to split the equity 50/50, but have the voting rights divided differently. This is a pain in the ass because you have to insert a bunch of (extra) legal mumbo jumbo in the operating agreement for tax purposes.

A potential problem is if you both sort of thought of the idea together (i.e. it was an iterative process). Well, then, if you are adamant about a 50/50 split, you can always resort to third (neutral) party arbitration if a dispute should arise, but this is a pain.

I would do it 49.9/50.1---one of you must have started this entire process.

<comment><USER5> While a 50/50 ownership+voting split may seem "fair", your lawyer is right that it can easily create a situation where it is difficult to make resolutions and get things done. And in the world of a startup, the inability to quickly make decisions can be the equivalent of cutting off your own air supply. While it may mean one less point of equity today, it could be the difference between your startup ultimately going anywhere for both of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've had 2 and three person partnerships... One person tends to grab the thought-leadership and the others tend to follow (tho hopefully not so much that they don't speak up with great ideas).

I would advise having a buy-sell agreement that allows a graceful exit if one person wants out, but otherwise I'd agree that partner selection is 50% of the battle (and letting go of your own ego is the other 50%).

For buy sell agreements, the best I've seen, simply stated, is this:

At any time, partner A can make an offer to buy Partner B's stake for Value X (whatever they want to offer). The rub is that Partner B can decide to reverse the offer (buying Partner A's stake for Value X) and Partner A is obliged to sell.

Hopefully you'll never need such an agreement, but it sucks to feel trapped in a business (or trapped with a partner who has turned into a lunatic or is no longer pulling his weight).

So far, every partnership I've had has been an even one, and I've never had to exercise an buy-sell clause like that (knock on wood!).

<comment><AUTHOR> "One person tends to grab the thought-leadership and the others tend to follow"

For us, it's actually been very even. Our visions for the final product seem very much in-sync, enough that I'll do a UI mockup on paper and he'll do a UI mockup on paper and they'll be essentially identical, modulo things like panel placement.

It helps that I jumped on board because I could see myself as a user of the product, so I'm essentially in the demographic that he spent several months studying while coming up with the idea. Plus, we've read many of the same websites and articles (at least as far as the sector is concerned; we read different stuff for general startup knowledge), so we're coming from similar backgrounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think they got Wayne as a tiebreaker. According to Woz's interview in _Founders at Work_ , they got him because he knew about business. Woz also said in that interview that he had zero serious disagreements with Jobs. There was one point where Jobs tried to get him to decrease the number of expansion slots in the Apple II, and Woz simply refused, and that was the end of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I could've sworn that in Woz's speech in Startup School 2005, he mentioned that Wayne had been brought on as a tiebreaker (in addition to having business expertise). And that's the story given in Apple Confidential: <http://extras.denverpost.com/books/chap0411h.htm>

I've also read several interviews with Woz that say he and Jobs had zero serious disagreements, but that doesn't mean that they _expected_ zero disagreements, or that they didn't want to be prepared just in case. They might've brought Wayne on as a tiebreaker and then found they didn't need him (rather fortunate, as they bought him out right when they were getting popular).

<comment><USER7> Ok, looks like he was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kill the other partner.

Just kidding, I'd follow the advice of others, either involve a third person or have on person carry slightly more weight in the company (in terms of equity).

Just an aside, but you know who I go to when I need advice on a dispute or question though? My mom! I swear that lady knows everything about life!

</comment><comment><USER9> Use a random number generator! <http://random.irb.hr/> \- a quantum RNG is online, if you get stuck on an issue then a random choice may be as good as any other if both of you are dead-set and won't budge.

</comment><comment><USER10> What would happen if the 50.1%'er overruled the 49.9%'er on something that was very important? It might very well be the end of the company entirely.

When I incorporated my lawyer thought 50/50 was the obvious choice.</comment>


Ask HN: Can too much "intellectual curiosity" cause psychological problems? - <AUTHOR> HN's maxim - "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" seems to become a serious problem for me. I can't stop thinking about stuff. Not in a good way as if it would lead to me some brilliant inventions, but rather in a troubling one that I question everything to a point where it becomes pathological. I spent a lot of time reading theoretical philosophy (External world skepticism, solipsism) etc. Most people seem to think of these as quixotic thought-experiments, but they become a serious trouble for me in my journey to "figuring everything out". Is there anything such as epistemological psychotherapy? lol. <comment><USER2> Well, I can tell you what has helped me so far in my own epistemic crisis:

The first two chapters of "Maps of Meaning" helped me separate truth-as-a- descriptive-framework vs truth-as-a-functional-framework, which was great for recovering from what postmodernism did to our sense of truth.

"Postmodernism for Rationalists"[1] really helped me define the chaos i felt about truth, and helped me put words and philosophers to different thoughts that I didn't know were there.

"States and Nomads"[2] helped me realize how all models are wrong, and their utility is ultimately contextual. It also introduced me to Jorge Luis Borges, who has written a lot of creative fiction around ideas like this.

A big reprieve came from this analysis of an Emily Dickinson poem on truth[3]. The part about "circumference" of truth really worked for me, I feel now that peace has to come from outside that circumference, not inside (which is what you might be struggling with?). Bertrand Russell spent his life trying to find a philosophical basis for religion and never found one, but this is as close as I've gotten.

For my happiness, I intersperse fiction (poetry, short stories) with more serious essays of philosophy. I think that resulting balance between art and treatise has been important for me in getting through this, but I haven't been on this for long.

If any of this has landed for you, we can swap sources and thoughts sometime, which might be a good therapy (both ways).

[1]:[https://palegreendot.net/assets/2017-10-09/postmodernism_for...](https://palegreendot.net/assets/2017-10-09/postmodernism_for_rationalists.pdf) [2]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaFcI2UNrI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaFcI2UNrI) [3]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55kqNg88JqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55kqNg88JqI)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure that this will help ...

Take a few mathematics and physics courses. In the mathematic course try to think as a mathematician. In the physics courses try to think as a physicist. Sometimes it's good to view the world from a different perspective.

I have a Ph.D. in Math and 50% of a major in Physics. It's very interesting to see similar topics in both areas and understand how each one approach the problem. [And sometimes it's interesting to translate the problem to the other field and fill the details.]</comment>