Millennials still recognise songs from music's 1960s-90s golden age, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.thejournal.ie/millennials-music-knowledge-1960s-4481978-Feb2019/ <comment><USER2> My gen Z's listen to the most eclectic things you can imagine. My 14yo loves Michael Jackson.

The musical "generation gap" was a strange 20th century artifact brought on by the fact that the only music you could access freely was what was brought to the store in your neighborhood on a truck (or the ads that played on the radio to sell said music).

Modern day listeners can just type a name and follow a rabbit hole as deep as the history of recorded music. If you're just a kid exploring, you experience Lady Gaga and Duran Duran on equal footing and click both into you favorites with equal effort.

Its a golden age.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. Especially when it comes to Baroque/Classical music on Youtube. I've spent many an evening just firing up a 50 minute symphony and enjoying a night with a free classical performance! Beat that!

<comment><USER4> My girlfriend is a classical musician and it blew my mind how she _only_ listened to music on YouTube. Nowadays I try to listen to classical music on YouTube to see the sheet music scroll by :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect) as explained by Taleb

"If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another fifty years. This, simply, as a rule, tells you why things that have been around for a long time are not "aging" like persons, but "aging" in reverse. Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy. This is an indicator of some robustness. The robustness of an item is proportional to its life!"

<comment><USER6> Exactly. The songs we remember from a long time ago are the absolute best of the best because anything that wasn't absolutely outstanding has been forgotten where as current_year top 100 has a lot of stuff that is ok and only made it there because of its newness.

<comment><USER7> It just means they're memorable — being the "best" is more questionable — a lot of good things never see high popularity outside of niche groups, and might be remembered in that niche but forgotten by the public at large; a lot of bad things are remembered, sometimes because they were bad, sometimes because they coincided with other events.

But in general, time is a pretty good filter for quality (you'll miss some good stuff, but if you only look at the culturally remembered stuff, you've still probably got a lifetime of good media)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> HN title:

> Millennials recognise songs from music's 1960s-90s more than new songs

Actual article title:

> Millennials' still recognise songs from music's 1960s-90s golden age, study > finds

Actual article content:

> By contrast, their recognition of musical hits from 2000 to 2015, while > higher overall than the previous era, diminishes rapidly over time.

Hmm, that sounds more reasonable.

<comment><USER9> > [recognition of recent hits] is higher overall than the previous era

> considerable correlation between the likelihood of recognizing a given song > and its corresponding play count on Spotify

All of the Spotify top 100 are from 2011 or later, except for one from 1975.[1] Readers would be better off with the opposite of the headline.

That song from 1975 is an interesting case. Bohemian Rhapsody received mixed reviews at the time, and though it charted, was not a number one in the US. I'm not sure it was even the most widely known Queen song until Wayne's World. The recent biopic (and associated promotion) is undoubtedly giving it a brand new bump.

Klosterman argues in "But What if We're Wrong?" that future generations will have a pretty random understanding of our pop culture, judging from how poorly we tend to understand the past.[3]

Given enough time, some semi-random song like Bohemian Rhapsody will inevitably become a stand-in for all 20th century music, or at least all rock and roll.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- streamed_songs_on...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- streamed_songs_on_Spotify#100_most_streamed_songs)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2017/may/07/elvi...](https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2017/may/07/elvis- presley-memorabilia-plummeting-in-price)

[3] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27068734-but-what-if- we-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27068734-but-what-if-we-re-wrong- thinking-about-the-present-as-if-it-were-the-pa)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The main thing that killed pop music was the telecommunications act of 1994. It removed restrictions on conglomerates owning radio stations which led to Clear Channel buying everything and syndicating the same pop music everywhere. Before that, you had a lot of independent FM stations that had music DJs who would go out and discover artists who had an interesting sound and promote them. Live 105 in San Francisco used to have a number of great DJs who used to do this in the late 80s and early 90s. After the Clear Channel Borg bought everyone, it really turned into a monoculture that didn't produce much innovation.

<comment><USER11> It seems to me that popular music has stopped changing as rapidly in the past 10-15 years compared to over a similar span a few decades ago. Of course that impression could be wrong, like the difficulty of understanding "history" as you live it versus study it from a book. But if not, maybe it's caused by the consolidation you mention.

<comment><USER12> Look at pop country music. That stuff hit a plateau in the late 90s. It's the exact same stuff. Maybe pop music has ended up in the same place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I want to know is, what happened in the 60s that makes it the "start" of the modern musical era? Why is listening to music from the 60s still cool, but music from the 50s is rather kitsch and old-fashioned? There was some sort of phase change that happened at that time which is so baked into our consciousness that we rarely challenge it.

<comment><USER14> Gotta disagree with this. I usually listen to 70's rock like Rush, Yes, Led Zep, King Crimson, The Who etc etc. One of the interesting things I found is famous rock drummers from that era are usually influenced by great jazz drummers from 50/60's.

For example Keith Moon (big Gene Krupa fan) and John Bonham (his triplets and big boomy kick drum sound reminds me to Joe Morello). My exploration of rock leads me to jazz.

Bottom line: cool music is always cool, regardless of the year they were released at

<comment><USER15> Of course you're right that each generation of _musicians_ is influenced by the previous generation(s)... back to Beethoven and Mozart and beyond. But there does seem to be very real cliff from an _audience_ interest standpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this just has to do with uniqueness of those songs in comparison to the the Max Martin pop formula output we have today. The Beatles' music, while I'm not an enormous fan, is notably unique in chord progression and tempo. A lot of today's pop has little variation because the industry knows the formula works.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you're a millennial your childhood is likely filled with your parents musical tastes (60s-90s) and then your own experience 80s to early 2000s. This is pretty much "generation N recognizes music from their youth more than that of generation N+1's youth".

</comment><comment><USER18> If a song was released in 1980, and you're 25, you've had 25 years' worth of opportunities to hear it. If it was released in 2008, you've had only 11 years' worth of opportunities to hear it. Regardless of artistic merit, surely the music you've been exposed to longer, is the music you're more likely to recognize?

</comment><comment><USER19> A large portion of millennials grew up in the 80s and 90s (myself included). It makes sense that we'd recognize music from our youth more than pop music from our 30s.

</comment><comment><USER20> I do find it interesting that so many songs from this period persist despite their age and relative obscurity in everyday life.

For example, with the exception of Mariah Carey's Indestructable #1 song, the holiday 100 [1] are predominantly from the 50s and 60s.

I'd love to understand why this is - the Lindy Effect just describes it, doesn't really explain it.

[1] [https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-holiday- songs](https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-holiday-songs)

</comment><comment><USER21> The 60's were a decade in time when youth reigned supreme. This was due to a combination of lots of young people demographically combined with plenty of relatively high paying jobs combined with the pill.

It's not too surprising that the 60's state of mind still resonates with youth today. "You might have had your fill but I feel it still."

</comment><comment><USER22> I would argue that the reason for this is radio vs streaming. In that time period, radio was king. Radio stations tended to play a very narrow selection of hits over and over and over until you couldn't help but remember every word. These songs became ingrained into our culture. If you wanted more, you had to go to the record store, which was still quite limiting. Now, we have streaming, which lowers the barrier between listeners and many thousands of artists. As a result, people are exposed to a much broader variety of music now, meaning it's less likely that there are hits that everyone knows.

</comment><comment><USER23> Music is much more fragmented now, so it doesn't seem surprising

<comment><USER6> What do you mean by fragmented?

<comment><USER24> There is no more 'mainstream'. In an age where you could only get music on a few radio stations and what could fit in a physical record store, selection was a lot more limited.

In the 60s pretty much every teenager listened to rock. In the 70s disco came and you couldn't get away from it. 80s glam metal and rap started. All the youth watch MTV.

Now, you can listen to whatever you want to on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Music. There are tons of popular genres: edm, rap, hiphop, rock, pop, etc, etc. The reach of the biggest pop stars is much reduced. In the 60s everybody knew who the Monkeys were. I can't think of any modern manufactured band that has that name recognition. Last ones were probably NSync / Backstreet boys.

<comment><USER25> I would also add, the ability to spread things by word of mouth online is much better in the age of social networks etc. So even very obscure niches can get filled.

For example, so far as I can tell, these guys have gotten most of those likes from reshares of the video (I've seen it several times, from completely random people). Whereas if you did market research, I doubt that "Mongolian bluegrass folk" would rate highly, so finding a publisher might get tricky.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM8dCGIm6yc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM8dCGIm6yc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "The large number of popular songs during the latter part of the 30th century may explain why so many are recognisable decades later." or even before!

<comment><USER27> I laughed at this typo. I do wonder what music we'll remember in the 30th century...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As someone who's a millennial and also have been involved with music in different ways (and has a perfect pitch according to others) all my life. I know it sounds like a cliche, but "they don't make 'em like they used to".

I can't name a single musician/band of today that stand up to sheer raw talent of the likes of Beatles, Abba, Queen and others from that time period. They were absolute titans of music with unparalleled achievements. There's no band that can make teenage girls go crazy and chase them like they did Beatles. There's no band like ABBA that could fill a concert hall 600 times if they sold all the tickets people wanted to buy when they only intended to do a single concert. There's no band that can make 300K people sing along during a concert like Freddie Mercury could. I laughed at a comment that I read on Youtube couple of days ago: "Year 1980 - Queen is the best band ever. Year 2180 - Queen is the best band ever.", but then I realized it could end up being a fact after all.

Music of today feels overly commercialized, cheap, forced and streamlined. There's also a "mathematical" problem where composers are running out of unique melodies for the classic 3 minute format.

<comment><USER29> I don't have much time because I'm at work, so I won't write everything I have on my mind. I've been in your spot before, I also have perfect pitch (which I'd argue is irrelevant to the discussion) and I severely disagree. There's more music being produced than ever before. There is a vast amount of music you didn't listen to yet - it's humanly impossible to sift through it all. There's obviously a lot of cheap, quickly produced music, but IMHO the way you describe it makes it feel like "music died 15 years ago". It didn't. E.g. we still have readily identifiable trends in music (eg. indie, vaporwave, chillwave, trap beats).

Filling up concert halls isn't a viable way of measuring an artist's achievement in the internet age for me. People go to concert just because they know the band's name, because someone bought them a ticket or because the media built up the hype.

As for melodies - we won't run out of them anytime soon. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAcjV60RnRw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAcjV60RnRw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The title is totally wrong. If you read the article, or the study, what they are actually saying is that retention of older songs is longer. Their claim is that older songs are more memorable than newer ones because of the way they are written and executed.

</comment><comment><USER31> A thought here: Multitrack recording appeared in 1955 : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitrack_recording](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitrack_recording). Multitracking opened a new, fertile valley for exploration and did usher in a golden age of pop music that was truly "poplar music". It also made a lot of money. The industry peaked about the year 2000 when napster ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster)) blew the bottom out of sales . The industry makes about 1/3 of what it used to ( see [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry- sales/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/) for a graphic on how much revenue has declined ). MP3 killed the video star.

There's still innovation and new stuff. People can make any sound they want on their laptops these days.

There's a lot less incentive to go into the business for talented people.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's not surprising--on average, the quality of those tracks was _way_ better than what followed. There's equally good stuff being made now, but you really have to hunt for it.

<comment><USER33> Do you think that's just selection bias? I.e. no one remembers all the low quality songs from back then

<comment><USER32> I can think of hundreds of great tracks from that period. I've managed to discover perhaps an equal number from after, but I had to dig really hard to find them. The "popular" stuff these days is chrome-plated garbage.

<comment><USER33> I remember reading somewhere that people prefer music they first heard around ages 13 - 21.

Just curious, what age were you when you first heard those tracks?

<comment><USER32> That's true for me. Unfortunately, I'm an outlier in the sense that I heard virtually zero music before 13 (as if I were living on an Amish farm or something).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Guitar Hero. It was a thing.

</comment><comment><USER35> Modern pop music is becoming trashier by the year. Loud (as in no dynamic range), obnoxious crescendos and drops, little nuance, simple melodies, no harmony, obvious grooves that lack the subtle swing required to shake someone from the inside. Ever increasing narcissistic and low-brow lyrical content. It's everything I despise.

Pop music has always been trashy, but there's a big difference between The Monkeys and Cardi B. I hear pop songs from the past and hum along. Pop songs from the present inspire nothing but a frothing rage in me.

Thankfully there's a lot of great music that isn't popular! I just have to avoid the radio and television.

<comment><USER36> Where do you find it?

<comment><USER35> Finding music becomes easier the more you practise, but a few things you can do are: 1) Follow the 'if you like this, you might like this' recommendations in your music program of choice. 2) Curate your own playlist/collection to better inform the algorithms. I use Youtube, SoundCloud and BandCamp a lot these days and keep a list of favourites on each site. 3) Go out and see bands if you have access to bars/venues, it's better in cities. See bands you don't know but sound good on paper. There's a ton of good music from bands that aren't signed to major labels 4) Talk to people, what do they like? Check out their recommendations, update your favourites lists, back to 1) and follow your nose. 5) Inform yourself about what labels release music you like. Following labels is often better than following artists, they each curate a sound of sorts and have some variety across that. Discogs.com is a great site for learning about artists, labels, etc and finding specific releases. 5) Listen to community radio. They often have DJs that are really into genre X or sound Y and are a wealth of information and great playlists. Popular radio stations don't exist to play music, they are just advertisement platforms.

What kind of music do you like? I can probably throw a few artists at you.

<comment><USER37> Super helpful comment! Thanks for taking the time to outline that so clearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't know if it's my age and this is normal but this fits perfectly with my feeling that the music which ends up on the charts now sound very similar within their genre. It feels like it's the same tunes being played over and over and as someone who's english is the second (third) language, I grew up not listening to the lyrics which makes it sound even more similar.

I just thought about one song I heard on the radio that stayed in my mind and the first one that came into my mind was "Portugal The Man - Feel It Still" and this is only because it's actually "The Marvelettes - Please Mr. Postman" from '61...

My personal taste is also stuck in the past somewhere around the time The Prodigy was rhythmic and MTV played actual music.

<comment><USER39> Yeah my pop music taste froze in the mid 90s and the only new music I listen to is edm which is fairly disposable.</comment></comment>


Web Design is Dead - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/07/06/why-web-design-dead/#KemqvvUL_mql <comment><USER2> Web design is certainly dead on that site. Unless web design is about slapping visitors straight in the face with a series of irrelevant intrusive irritating adverts.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      Web design is certainly dead on that site.

Indeed. Ghostery shows the following external sites hit from _one load_ of _this one page_ :

Bluekai

Facebook Connect

Google Adsense

Google Analytics

Optimizely

outbrain

Parse-ly

Pinterest

Scorecard Research Beacon

ShareThrough

SoundCloud

Twitter Advertising

Twitter Button</comment>


The real roots of early city states may rip up the textbooks - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23631462-700-the-real-roots-of-early-city-states-may-rip-up-the-textbooks/ <comment><USER2> The forager/garden-farm way of life and the monocrop agriculture way of life are mutually exclusive. The compulsory city-states that we associate with "civilization" depends fundamentally on taking over land for monocrops. The agro-forager way of life depends on managed biodiversity, with many interdependent species.

Thus throughout history you have the repeated pattern of displacement, slavery, genocide, "re-education" and oppression of foraging people and garden farmers by monocrop-powered militarized states. It's been a 10,000 year global war, and it is close to having been "won" by civilization. The losers, of course, are all indigenous people worldwide, as well as the basic livability of our planet and probably 80% of its species.

The irony, of course, is that monocrop agriculture isn't sustainable. It's had a good run, but we're coming up against some really tough limits soon. The Green Revolution bought some time, but it's probably going to be a _very_ hard landing. All that biodiversity took millions of years to radiate, and only a short time to destroy. Human cultural diversity took 100,000-500,000 years to develop many different of ways of life, and only a short time to liquidate.

I only hold out hope that enough species, ecosystems and cultures are left to help guide civilization toward something sustainable. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.

<comment><USER3> Similarly, the pastoralist agriculture way of life wasn't sustainable, and it fell to mass-production capitalism in the 30s and 40s. The Green Revolution could be viewed as the final death knell of that societal organization: now, small family farms worked by hand labor are virtually extinct, and all of the seeds are owned by Monsanto, which charges monopoly prices for a single harvest with no possibility of using the seeds from that harvest for the next (they've been genetically engineered to be sterile), and they require large fossil-fuel fertilizer inputs to grow anyway.

And it's likely that mass-production capitalism is beginning to die as well, killed by robotics, computers, the Internet, micro-manufacturing, and the Information Age. The key developments of _that_ revolution are just in the labs right now, so it's a bit unclear what form the eventual civilization will take, but the writing's already on the wall.

Life has never been about sustainability. You could look at each phase of evolution - from protists to eukaryotes to vertebrates to land-dwellers to dinosaurs to mammals to humans to hunter-gatherers to agriculture to industrialization to information - as a phase-change in complexity levels, one which usually kills off the vast majority of diversity at the lower levels. In other words, life is a pyramid scheme, and death is a natural part of it. Death doesn't mean the absence of anything, it means the emergence of something new and unforeseen.

<comment><USER4> > In other words, life is a pyramid scheme, and death is a natural part of it. > Death doesn't mean the absence of anything, it means the emergence of > something new and unforeseen.

Interesting view about the link between life and death.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that is an interesting point about the cycle of life and death -- or "recycle" of matter and energy into new forms over time. The fossil record tends to show that -- life emerges into vast diversity and then gets reduced to a few very successful forms and stays that way until some disaster (asteroid, volcanoes, atmospheric change, etc.) and then eventually there is a new radiation of diverse life and then it reduces again...

One might see the same thing happening capitalism (as a stretch). There is a lot of diversity (like with early microcomputer manufacturers in the 1970s and 1980s) and then only a couple standard forms are left -- until the cycle repeats with laptops and then smartphones as conditions change (like cheaper small parts leading to discontinuities in what is possible). And before that, there was a lot of diversity too with early computers in the 1940s and 1950s until IBM dominated the computing landscape until the microcomputer came along.

With trees, there may be lots of seedlings out there getting mostly shaded out but essentially for a big tree to fall and open up a spot in the canopy where they can find lots of sunlight to grow into.

That said, the insight only holds -- for a reasonably short timescale -- as long as there is a vibrant ecosystem or culture surrounding the death to fill in the hole. Otherwise, it might be a long time before, say, the matter involved in a supernova becomes anything living again...

Although, as in a comment someone made on heavier matter created by neutron stars merging, the metal rings we were are a legacy of such events long ago. So, as I see it, I have a couple recycling bins. The ones for compost or bottles get recycled on a timescale of months or yeaar. By contrast, the trash can contents gets recyled on the order of tends of millions of years when the landfill eventually slides under a continental plate somewhere and down into the Earth's mantel to be melted down as magma and then become a mountain to become eroded or mined... Or, in a worst case, the landfill will eventually get absorbed by the Sun in a few billion years when it becomes a Red Giant. So, what bin I put something in when I discard it is a question of how quickly I want it to be recycled. :-)

(Frankly, we'll probably be mining our landfills soon enough with robotics and nanotech and biotech, but that is a different point... [http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM5E.html#5e](http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM5E.html#5e) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Life might not be nasty, brutish, and short for some lucky bushmen, but for most it sure seems to suck: "Bushmen health, in general, is not good though: 50% of children die before the age of 15; 20% die within their first year (mostly of gastrointestinal infections). Average life expectancy is about 45-50 years"

<comment><USER7> High childhood mortality, and adult life expectancy until the 40s doesn't necessarily have to be characterized as nasty or brutish. It was the norm for most of human existence, until the new stone age (When the undergraduate simplification "old people live until 70, and life expectancy is really about child mortality" kicks in.)

Perhaps unexpectedly, anthropologists visiting such societies often perceive them as remarkably vibrant and healthy, because so much of the population is in their teens and twenties.

"Were they beautiful? We were all beautiful. We were in our twenties." ― Steve Martin

<comment><USER8> > High childhood mortality, and adult life expectancy until the 40s doesn't > necessarily have to be characterized as nasty or brutish.

> It was the norm for most of human existence

The second statement isn't an argument against the first. In fact the original 'nasty, brutish, and short' quote, I think by Winston Churchill, stated that it was the norm. Slavery and monarchy, not freedom and democracy, was the norm for most of human history. Epidemics and famine, not the CDC and obesity, used to be the norm.

<comment><USER9> The quote is from 17th-century British philosopher, Thomas Hobbes who argued that in the state of nature, life was a matter of:

"continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

He proposed that the solution was the voluntary creation by means of a 'social contract' of an absolute state ruled by a monarch who was above the law.

[http://www.historyinanhour.com/2013/04/05/thomas-hobbes- summ...](http://www.historyinanhour.com/2013/04/05/thomas-hobbes-summary/)

<comment><USER10> True, but that quote is often used by all who oppose the anarchists; all who believe that in order to have civilization, we have to give up some rights.

I have noticed an uptick in the number of ideological anarchists lately, though, both right and left, within my social sphere. I do think that is one of those interesting "horeshoe" situations in politics; the right anarchists and the left anarchists, in many ways are the extremes of the right and the left, but they have so much in common; they both believe that people can function without being forced to give up any of their own rights (though they deeply disagree as to what rights a person has.)

Most people, I think, agree that that part of Hobbes' argument is not weakened by the fact that Hobbes wasn't able to see (or that the political realities of his situation made it difficult to write about[1]) political systems other than absolute rule.

[1]A contemporary, the incredible poet John Milton, actually wrote a paean to regicide. "On the tenure of kings and magistrates" or something like that, which I read as "Please don't kill me, see? I'm on your side" \- existing as an intellectual during times of revolution can be a tricky thing. I personally think "Paradise lost" is a better introduction to Milton, but the point remains.

<comment><USER11> That horseshoe effect you mention just goes to show how limited the bipolar- spectrum representation of political stances really is. Anarchism can be implemented all sorts of ways, and can easily be considered orthogonal to the conservatism-liberalism axis, in the cosmopolitan as well as the American- appropriated senses. s/anarchism/{communism, socialism, authoritarianism, fascism, *ism} and you have an equally valid statement.

<comment><USER10> ok, sure. My point was that right-anarchists and left-anarchists are very different people with very different views of fundamental rights, but from an outside perspective, they look very similar in some ways.

I think, from your statement, that you agree with the above, and you say this is evidence that the right-left axis is not useful. I personally think it might have to do with anarchism making fundamentally different assumptions about humanity and human nature, assumptions that are so out of phase with my understanding of humanity that I... just don't see it in the ways that I can understand a marxist or a libertarian. It's not about agreeing or disagreeing, it is like we have had completely different experiences of humanity and completely different readings of history.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely, lived experiences shape our expectations about how the world- and society-at-large treats people, and how they ought to be (re)organized to maximize benefits.

You point to fundamentally different assumptions, and as a whole I agree with that too. I think that anarchists put less emphasis on human nature per se than they do on ethical organization practices--they preach a scheme of purely voluntary self-organization mostly from an ethical standpoint, and this stance implies that they view human agency as the most important ethical question, rather than meeting basic needs (communism) or castrating exploitative practices in labor (socialism/Marxism). Libertarians seem to be whistling another tune, more along the lines of anarchism but by also tying capitalist success to a person's ability to steer their path in life. Anarchists think that free association will provide for those who need by virtue of a sense of humanistic camaraderie.

I'm not arguing for or against anything here or anything you've said, and I'm not sure I'm doing much at all except a fun exercise to clarify the varying motivations of people in their quest to restructure economies and societies. But it is interesting to consider and feels good to put to words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Around 12,000 BC, the world's population stood at between two and four million; by 2000 BC, it was around 25 million. But the vast majority of people had no contact with states as late as the end of the 15th century – Europe's middle ages."

This seems extremely off to me. In the 15th century CE most people on Earth were most definitely sedentary farmers or nomadic pastoralists living under one sort of state or another. That wasn't necessarily a large kingdom (though tens of millions lived in China, where kingdoms were quite large even when it was divided), and it's not like farmers knew or cared much about the politics of their kings, but there was definitely a state, and even when there wasn't one towns and villages had their own institutions and hierarchies that were quite different from the egalitarian lifestyle of hunter gatherers.

To put that in another words, in agricultural societies, even in the most remote and independent villages, women and men were not equal, fathers and grown-up sons were not equal, brothers were not equal and different families were not equal.

These societies are generally fiercely patriarchal - in the sense that females were viewed as property of the male head of the household, not in the sense the women were not allowed to hunt. This concept would entirely alien in hunter-gatherer societies and in most of them so is the very concept of property itself.

<comment><USER13> There is no historical evidence that agricultural societies were patriarchal, nor that females were viewed as property of the male head of the household. If we look at survived native cultures, the key observation is culture and traditional gave women and men separated roles and responsibilities with the elders of each as guides and authority. The elder women decided, taught and guide the other women and girls in the group, while the elder men did the same for the men and boys. Men were not allowed to interfere with the domain of the elder women, and women were not allowed to interfere within the domain of the elder men.

In order for it to be a fiercely patriarchal where females were viewed as property of the male head of the household, it would mean that men had the power to decide what women should and should not do. This fly in contrast to when culture and tradition fully dictate how people should live their life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The New Yorker recently covered the same topics and the bushman book as well:

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-case- again...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-case-against- civilization)

</comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't surprise me at all if government was born from coercion of the individual to the needs of the state.. it is after all the definition of government.

<comment><USER16> Government was born from the necessity to manage and defend grain stockpiles. Compared to hunted/foraged food, grain could be stored for long periods of time and its high energy density made it a prime target for thieves/marauders.

<comment><USER17> That's one theory.

I find myself wondering what exactly differentiates a "government" from a "family council" or "tribal leadership" or whatever other phrase you want to use to describe an "authority-wielding-body with a monopoly on force."

I think "governments" are as old as people, and probably older. Many social animals have leaders who dominate the rest of the herd.

My feeling is that governments have always been here, they've just gotten bigger and maybe a little more sinister.

<comment><USER16> As with many things, the line is blurry. I think governments really start to take shape once you get past Dunbar's number [0]. When people no longer know everybody, they need to rely on rules and designated authority figures to settle disputes. I don't know of any way around that.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)

<comment><USER18> The seems suspect; after all, the parliaments and other legislative chambers of most countries are larger than Dunbar's number.

<comment><USER16> Parliaments operate based on rules with a central authority, usually called the speaker, who acts to settle disputes. Parliaments do not operate like an extended family.

<comment><USER18> The speaker doesn't really settle disputes, only helps the parties do that between themselves. They're mediators, not arbitrators. And they don't even set the mediation rules. The disputes are settled by vote.

As a member of a bellicose family, I can assure you that family members (often older and respected by both sides) acting as mediators are pretty common :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> An examination of the habits of fishes, insects, &c, will readily show that being "the fittest" is often an incredibly, tough harsh life.

</comment><comment><USER20> >"For at least 4000 years, there were settled communities but no evidence of state power"

Well that doesn't mean state power isn't necessary for large scale communities. It just shows that in the thousands of years after the dawn of agriculture communities were too small to require a state framework to exist. As community scale increased, states became necessary.

</comment><comment><USER21> Apparently the poli sci and anthropology guys aren't mixing with the history profs very much.

Most history professors I've known refer to the dark ages as the "so-called dark ages" because that time period served as proof-positive that you can have civilized society without the state.

<comment><USER22> Are there any books or papers you could recommend which explore this view of the dark ages - say that compare/contrast the type of civilized society that emerges in the presence of a state with one that emerges in its absence?

<comment><USER12> I think this is yet another misconception that might come out of theoretical political science (or the ignorant press). The political difference between the Early Middle Ages (a.k.a the dark ages) and the Roman empire wasn't the lack of state, but a very different type of state.

The Early Middle Ages in Europe saw a large number of short-lived monarchies and a few long-lived ones. The Catholic Church rivaled and often surpassed secular states in its power. Throughout the entire middle ages, for most of the peasantry, interaction with the state in the broadest sense that we have today (i.e. with the king) was scarce. Local rulers, dignitaries and institutions, had large autonomy and more direct influence on the daily lives of peasants.

Free cities are a good example of completely autonomous sovereignty. If they were chartered, the local princes had little power over them - but chartered cities only appear in the very end of the dark ages.

Anyway, I recommend 'Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade' by Henri Pirenne. It's an old book and there's definitely more up to date research, but Henri Pirenne is a brilliant historian and writer and he paints a very vivid picture of what the "so-called dark ages" in Europe were like.</comment></comment></comment>


False Advertising for College Is Pretty Much the Norm - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-07/for-profit-colleges-aren-t-the-only-ones-with-false-advertising <comment><USER2> The real problem with higher education is really how we finance it. Give the lenders the ability to discriminate based on major and borrowers the ability to default easier and all of a sudden you've got some banks seriously motivated to ensure students get economic return on their investments.

Besides, it just shouldn't take a decade or more for someone to discharge a bad debt. Student debt seems uniquely oppressive within the American system, and it really needs to look more like other forms of personal debt.

<comment><USER3> That's how you get nothing but science and engineering majors, because most other majors don't have the ROI on average. But society is probably better off with some history and art majors too.

We need to find a way to finance education that isn't based on future income.

<comment><USER4> Studying things that don't make money has always been the privilege of the wealthy. Just because college was once only for the elite doesn't mean those same tedious sayings apply to our current world.

<comment><USER5> But when I went to college, in the 70's and 80's, people did exactly that. I studies math but lots of folks studied History. You didn't have to be wealthy.

What changed? Or was that time an aberration?

<comment><USER4> 1) Vastly more people enroll in college now, per capita. It used to be a powerful signal, since only the most intelligent and driven people would go. Now it is just the minimum you need.

2) Cost of college has skyrocketed, and public funding for colleges has plummetted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The U.S. would do itself a huge favour by allowing student debt to be bankruptable. College prices can rise infinitely because there is an unlimited supply of AAA+ debt to feed it. Drop that rating to reality and investors don't buy the debt, loans don't get originated, demand for college at $250k dries up.

<comment><USER7> Who is going to lend tens of thousands of dollars to an 18 year old with no income, no assets, and no credit?

<comment><USER8> _Who is going to lend tens of thousands of dollars to an 18 year old with no income, no assets, and no credit?_

So, just to be clear _18 year olds getting tens of thousands in dischargeable loans_ is ridiculous, but _18 year olds getting tens of thousands in non- dischargeable loans_ makes total sense?

I mean, I understand why if you are a person making money off student loans, the latter is a great situation to have. But for anyone else, I'm not sure I agree that it's something we should fight for.

<comment><USER9> > I mean, I understand why if you are a person making money off student loans, > the latter is a great situation to have. But for anyone else, I'm not sure I > agree that it's something we should fight for.

But when a student needs a loan to pay for their education, the person lending money is more important than everyone else. If you are not going to incentivize lending money for college debt and instead going to add risks (of not getting paid back because discharging loans is now easy), then you will have less loans in the first place.

<comment><USER10> > But when a student needs a loan to pay for their education

When a student needs money to pay for their education, why are we extending loans rather than need-based grants?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it funny that these numbers are not available. In our free education system (Denmark), almost all of this data is freely available, also as the government, want students to make an informed choice. So most schools its easy to get graduation rate, salary estimates and even how many from the last class are employed, and how many in relevant fields.

<comment><USER5> I work at a college and we are required by the federal government to report all kinds of numbers. I know grad rate is among them, and I am 99% sure it is broken down by major. Those reports are public.

<comment><USER12> Where can I find them? Interested in mining the data

<comment><USER13> The Department of Education College Scorecard has a great deal of data which they make openly available: [https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/](https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Eh, even most normal colleges are pretty honest in their ads compared to game design ones:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAFLfx3mvIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAFLfx3mvIg)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRWvfMLl4ho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRWvfMLl4ho)

But seriously, the fact of the matter is:

1\. Too many people go to college, so its original value (as a status indicator) is now virtually non existent

2\. It's too expensive, so unless a good job is a near guaranteed outcome, people will laden with debt after going.

3\. Most people and most jobs don't need college, and the push to send everyone to college has led to rampant degree inflation in terms of academic requirements.

The only solution to fix that would be to somehow get employers to stop caring about degrees, to make it less 'necessary' for many people, and to encourage less people to attend for the career 'boost'.

<comment><USER15> > "Too many people go to college"

This is complete claptrap, would you also say "Too many people go to secondary school"? How about "Too many people go to elementary"?

There is vast value in an educated workforce and "too many" is a nonsense reason for why university level education shouldn't be available for all.

<comment><USER16> The second part of the statement clarified intent. It's not a moral judgement, it's conditional failure to fulfill the purpose of differentiation.

If education was the main motivation for college rather then trying to prove to employers you are a more competitive employee then your peers, I feel the system would look a lot different and not have nearly the same balooning cost problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would be interesting for someone to perform such a study in the UK, which already has a near-perfect and near-complete data set of which schools made an offer to each student.

You wouldn't even need any data from the universities themselves:

\- UCAS has the data for university offers and admissions (including subject studied)

\- HMRC (UK equivalent of IRS) knows whether you were employed and how much you earned

If they were somehow allowed to join their data and then release a data set stripped of PII, which includes offers, acceptances and income over time, that would be super-useful for those who see choosing a university as primarily or partially a way to increase their future income.

<comment><USER18> I think this would be an extremely interesting data set, but the obvious and simple analysis would not address the key problem that I see as mentioned in the article.

> On job placement, the biggest deception by prestigious colleges and > universities is to claim credit for the brainpower and work habits that > students already had when they arrived.

I see this all the time in my workplace. Many of my colleagues went to prestigious universities, but I am fairly certain that many of them would have gotten similar jobs even if they had not. There is evidence backing this up in that we gladly interview and hire candidates with similar pre-university experience who did not later go to prestigious universities.

It just so happens that prestigious universities admit students with such pre- university experience at fairly high rates.

My personal opinion is that the pre-university experience that I have in mind is a stronger and better signal than the university that they attend.

<comment><USER17> The data from UCAS would help distinguish between:

\- Someone who accepted a place at Oxford

\- Someone who was offered a place at Oxford, but went to Durham instead

It should also help distinguish those two from:

\- Someone admitted to Oxford who decided not to go to university at all

However (and perhaps this is the problem you have in mind) the data set for this last category is likely to be very very small.

So perhaps the data can help to compare universities, but not whether going to university at all helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I taught college for about a dozen years (part time on the side), and may get dragged back into again soon.

I can say emphatically, the quality of the schooling only helps people who would succeed anyways. Those that won't or can't, no school can help them. There are just too many lazy, unmotivated or simple defeatist students out there. To not be too harsh, there are many students over their head in life (debts, relationship or mental issues, etc...), also which a school can do little to help with.

Nothing proved this to me more than seeing half the class not turn in the easiest assignments.

<comment><USER20> > Those that won't or can't, no school can help them.

Isn't that the complete opposite to what teaching is about?

Have you considered that maybe this isn't a problem with the students but a problem with society and the very problem with the education institutions and teachers like you that are just basically feeding on them?

It's far easier (and economically viable in a shortsighted way) to blame students for their shortcomings than to make the effort to help them. I hope you are not thinking that you're doing society a favour by failing them instead of making the effort to figure out what their strengths are and/or if the way your teach, or what your employer preaches, may actually terrible.

Maybe you shouldn't go back to teaching the next time you get "dragged back into" it.

<comment><USER21> I don't agree 100% with the OP, but there are some students that are indeed just net negatives on the class and in general.

My state used to pay 100% of your state college tuition if you maintained a 3.0 GPA. A lot of students in my freshman dorm stayed until the 30 hour re- evaluation period and then disappeared forever. They partied, never went to class, never studied, and withdrew from most of their classes. They'd regularly fall asleep in or oversleep for 11:00 classes.

As a teacher, how do you handle these students? Many of them have not been raised to be on their own, and college is the first time they're let "off the leash". They're unprepared to be independent adults.

Additionally some students fail the same class over and over, then keep retaking the class with no improvement. They keep asking the same questions, slow down the class, and make it more difficult for everyone else to learn.

As a teacher how do you handle these students? Maybe you've already failed them twice. Maybe you've had extensive study groups, office hours, extra credit materials for these people, but they continue to do poorly. Some of them you suspect have learning disabilities or other mental problems that may always interfere with their ability to take your class.

(Later the state college system changed it to 80% tuition for 3.5 GPA, and at least my college mandated a maximum of 5 withdrawls, which cut down on the problem some.)

<comment><USER22> > As a teacher, how do you handle these students?

Many people don't believe in working hard today for having a better life tomorrow.

They think they might as well get stuck by lightening and die. Should we blame them for this kind of thinking?

This why the idea of a weflare state seems to saddle the ones who work with more work at the expense of those who are not willing to do anything.

Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent to the soceity's need and refuse to contribute.

Maybe best system is one where everyone is left to fend for themselves and receive no help from government or society?

<comment><USER21> > Today, the ones who get most benefit from the social system act indifferent > to the soceity need and refuse to contribute.

Look at the Panama Papers and all of the off shore banks, the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich, etc. As a percentage of income per individual, these are the the folks that benefit the most and contribute the least to society by several orders of magnitude. Subsidies, bailouts, elaborate tax evasion schemes, government guaranteed student loans. This is the real "welfare state". People on food stamps don't even scratch the surface in comparison.

<comment><USER22> > these are the the folks that benefit the most and contribute the least to > society by several orders of magnitude

Let's not assume there are only 2 groups, one rich/evil and other poor/victims.

There are also rich who contribute positively to the soceity at large.

I've no problem with with poor people who contribute their share.

There are also poor people who negatively contribute to the soceity.

Money is not the only way people contribute. Social interactions/behaviour/attitude also matter.

Are rich people shitting on BART escalator?

<comment><USER21> I absolutely did not classify all rich people. I specifically called out the extra wealthy that go out of their way to avoid taxes via loopholes or accounting tricks. Do you think Apple's billions of dollars in avoided tax is the same as someone shitting on the BART escalator? Do you think it's the same as McDonald's Corp not paying a living wage and as a result its employees being poor enough to need food stamps? (Which means tax payers are effectively subsiding McDonald's.)

<comment><USER23> It sounds like you're drawing the "extra wealthy" line at "can afford to spend $300 with a CPA"? Nobody wants to pay more taxes than they have to pay.

<comment><USER21> Of course nobody wants to pay more taxes then they have to pay. I'm not talking about paying extra taxes because you're nice. I'm saying per individual, those that actively avoid taxes by "technically being an Irish company which is actually a shell company and a bank in the Cayman Islands", those people that make immense amounts of money and pay next to no tax on it, per individual they contribute the least to our society. And they use their immense wealth to keep the system that way. And they rarely suffer any meaningful consequences for any of their actions.

Just because a CPA can do it for $300 doesn't change that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's odd that no one has addressed the issues of the rising cost of higher education. Once upon a time you could work a full-time job during the summer and part-time during the school year to pay for your education and graduate debt free. This wasn't that long ago either, I paid for my college education in the late 90s in cash I earned.

<comment><USER25> If you paid for school yourself with money earned through employment in the late 90s, my guess is you either majored in STEM, had a lot of AP or other credits going in, or did your first 2 years at a community college (or, possibly more than one of these). I'd also wager you went to an in-state public school. Am I right? If so, that probably makes you the exception rather than the rule.

<comment><USER24> I attended an in-state public university and paid the full in-state tuition from 1998-2001. I worked a retail position at an office supply store for 2 years before taking a help desk position at a small company. With both jobs I worked part-time during fall and spring semesters and full-time during the summer to pay for tuition.

> If so, that probably makes you the exception rather than the rule.

So you're saying the majority of people seeking higher education are going out of state or to private schools?

Enrollment in public/state colleges and universities outpaces private schools three to one.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college- enroll...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment- and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/) [https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think that most people shouldn't aspire to go to college. They should learn a trade instead in order to become a plumber, carpenter, electrician, or car mechanic. There are lots of occupations that don't require a college degree, yet provide a solid paycheck without the crushing mass of student debt accrued in the pursuit of a useless degree.

Michael Bloomberg himself said it best: [http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/19/pipe-dream- skip-c...](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/19/pipe-dream-skip-college- become-plumber-nyc-mayor-bloomberg-says.html) I'm personally surprised that this isn't conventional wisdom already.

<comment><USER27> That implies that college is only important for skill transfer towards an occupation. Historically, part of college was to help an individual grow personally and intellectually, to learn not just what to think, but how to think clearly, in order to better engage with civil society as an active participant.

It's always a little off-putting when I see people suggest that higher education is just for a job, and discount the importance of the above. Education that teaches you how to work but not how to think is part of how you get people believing things like vaccines are bad.

Trade schools are awesome, not arguing that, but so is critical thinking.

<comment><USER28> The viewpoint that college is a place for vocational education seems to be a very common viewpoint here on HN, a similar viewpoint seems to be that it's normal and easy to pack your life up and relocate so XYZ city because cost of living is low and wages are high, or some other reason. I guess being a tech- centred community this is to be expected.

I don't know about others, but for me university was an important experience as a place where I could grow as a person. It's a time where you get a few years to figure it all out before you spend the next 45 years working. Even if I could've done a 1 year course and then jumped straight into working full time, I wouldn't want to do that, and I don't think people should necessarily do that. There's more to life than getting a good qualification and getting a job that pays well.

I earn more than practically everybody in my friend group, yet I'm no happier than they are. I'm not more fulfilled in my life because I have a piece of paper that says I'm good with computers.

<comment><USER29> The idea that college is a place to find yourself is mostly a statement of immense privilege. I grew up upper middle class (professional parents with masters) and I didn't spend a moment in college finding myself, I spent most of it working or networking or sleeping. My folks paid for my CS degree from a state school, but even looking at the opportunity cost I'm not sure if anybody but the already wealthy or those at elite institutions can use 4 years to do anything but try to make $180k out of college - and despite all my efforts I failed at that.

> no happier

The other side isn't better. I make less than most of my friends and they, by virtue of independent wealth or higher income or elite status, are significantly happier than me.

<comment><USER30> Something is wrong with your analysis. Lots of below upper middle class folks report "finding themselves" in college, and most people don't earn $180k out of college regardless.

> I make less than most of my friends and they, by virtue of independent > wealth or higher income or elite status, are significantly happier than me.

I'm not really in the "money is irrelevant" bucket but this doesn't look like a monetary problem you're facing here.

Seems like you overtuned things and hit a lot of _diminishing returns_ , where you worked hard but didn't see much for it, but now you assume people who work less hard have seen even less, but that's not actually always the case because well we are told the world is unfair quite often, yet in cases like work we for some reason decide not to believe it.

<comment><USER29> > Seems like you overtuned things and hit a lot of diminishing returns, where > you worked hard but didn't see much for it, but now you assume people who > work less hard have seen even less

I know for a fact people who have worked less hard have more...but again, mostly at better schools, or have wealthier backgrounds or are just plain luckier than me.

I guess the real problem is I'm still a failure no matter how much effort I put in.

<comment><USER28> I don't want to sound like some bullshit life coach, but are you really a failure, or are you just measuring success wrong?

<comment><USER29> Probably both. I"m just angry that I had to work hard for [relatively] little when I could have just done nothing for 4 years and been in the same spot or better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Just because you got in doesn't mean that you should go". With the amount of high school students being prepared nearly around the clock to gain admission into college, there looks to be a great deal of FOMO. From parents to students to possibly school administrations. Not many stop to question is the student themselves ready for College or will they wash out with tons of debt?

</comment><comment><USER32> It's extremely hard to get good, unbiased information on colleges. Almost every news source is either based on metrics that students don't care about (number of papers published by the department, NSF grants, etc), or basically advertising done by the school itself. If there was a way to get information about schools, stuff like "oh XYZ college has really great campus life" or "ABC college has an amazing hackathon community" or even "oh this school's food sucks", then I think it would be immensely popular. The only (but main) problem is convincing college students to contribute.

<comment> dan-robertson A problem with this is that it's harder to do useful comparisons when most people have experience of only one of the things being compared. Eg if students say they are happy, does that mean the College is good or that they just bring in students who were happier than average in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The author's position is that the only reason to go to college is to learn academic subjects and obtain a job when graduating. If the same logic were applied to automobiles, there'd be no reason to choose a Lexus over a Nissan. College is about the whole experience: friends, contacts, travel, opportunities, and yeah, for some, it just comes down to wanting to to go to a place that "doesn't suck." As for innate ability - well, students were selected based on the college wanting specific types of students, largely because they want to create an unsuckish experience for the students. (There are unmotivated, immature, and/or improperly-backgrounded people in every class, but is it just a couple, or a majority?)

As for the focused universities, the ones that bill themselves solely as get- smart-get-job/promotion/whatever, and that fail to deliver, those must be held accountable. If I bought a "Cheaperson S Hatchback" and it consistently failed to take me to work, and a significant portion of other Cheaperson owners reported the same thing, then the problem is in the car, not me, and Cheaperson should be held accountable.

<comment><USER34> _College is about the whole experience: friends, contacts, travel, opportunities, and yeah, for some, it just comes down to wanting to to go to a place that "doesn't suck." _

And that's a luxury that only a few have. I'm sure most parents wouldn't get into thousands of dollars of student loan debt for that reason.

I can't imagine a world where it makes sense to get a luxury car and get in thousands of debt _before_ you have a good job either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> False advertising for _everything_ is pretty much the norm. I get fatigued just navigating through all of the rackets out there.

I do not know how people who skip the fine print manage to survive these days.

<comment><USER36> *advertising IS pretty much the norm for everything these days. we are being flooded with ads, but we're often selling ourselves as well... ad-based world this is..

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is at least congruent with my own experience on the provider side of the college equation; perhaps most interesting to me is the extent to which the grad school side is amiss: [https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you- should-know-befo...](https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know- before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and- opportunity-costs).

It does seem like the current system cannot go on forever.

<comment><USER37> Wait. 10 years is seriously the MEDIAN time to graduate an english lit. PhD?

That's awfully long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How about:

\- allowing discharging of student debt after 10 years

\- allowing someone to pay only up to 10% of adjusted gross income per year (lenders cannot ask for more; voluntary prepayment is okay)

What will happen, probably, is that:

\- lenders will start looking at earning potential of various degrees and loan amounts will be tied to degrees being pursued

\- tuitions for degrees with low earning potential will be lowered

\- universities who cannot afford to lower tuitions will shut down some departments. That slack will be picked up by community colleges.

\- some of the majors will only be pursued by rich (as happened for hundreds of years)

</comment><comment><USER38> "The administration of President Donald Trump just made it easier for for- profit colleges to get away with making fake promises about things like graduation rates and job placements."

This is where I stopped reading. Pretty much the first sentence. False advertising has been a problem for at least two decades now, mostly in Law and nothing has been done about it. People started talking about it only recently after the rich kids got affected by the false advertising; their parents spend $200k-$300k on a Law degree with a Bar test only to find out that their kids can't get a job that pays more than $50k because there's been an abundance of lawyers for about twenty years now.

Same goes for IT and all sorts of BS degrees ala marketing, communications, david beckham studies etc... besides you don't need somebody to tell you:

"Hey, save your money you don't yet have, that degree is useless! You can do that without having one."

You only need half a brain cell to figure this for yourself. It's not brain surgery and if you do need someone to tell you that, then you really do need a hard lesson.</comment>


The Case for Startups to Make Transparency the Top Priority - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/the-case-for-startups-to-make-radical-transparency-the-top-priority/ <comment><USER2> I'm all for transparency but "radical" doesn't seem prudent to me. I would never advocate transparency for transparency's sake. And I can think of other more important things such as delighting customers and staying in business (redundant since that's necessary to delight customers).

<comment><USER3> I'd disagree, at least as far as internal transparency is concerned. My experience in founding and running GrantTree for the last 5 years has been that total internal transparency of all business data (including the finances and individual transactions) has huge benefits in terms of both building trust between staff and the company, and in terms of forcing the company to face important issues and solve them properly rather than "hack" a solution via secret pay raises and bonuses.

If you want to build the kind of company where people stay because they love to work there, rather than the kind of company where people stay because they're getting paid a lot, I would say that total internal transparency is essential.

As far as external transparency goes, that is more thorny but I think a strong commitment to transparency helps there too. Customers don't want you to pretend you're perfect. Shit happens in business. Things go wrong. Customers want to know that when shit inevitably goes wrong, you'll own up to it, take responsibility, and fix things competently. If you have a habit of pretending everything's ok when it's not, well, that's a bad sign. If, on the other hand, you're noticeably transparent about your business, that's a good sign to customers that this will carry over when shit happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article seems to confuse management's transparency to employees with a company's transparency to the public. These are very different things, and I think one can make a good case for pursuing the former assiduously, while being cautious with the latter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article, but I'm sad to observe that Bellows stopped short of actually implementing his vision of transparency, in a number of ways. If he's reading this, I'd suggest having a wander through my articles at [http://danieltenner.com/open-cultures](http://danieltenner.com/open-cultures) and seeing if some ideas there are interesting...

Here's an example:

> Take compensation information, for example. At Yesware, that's kept strictly > private. Not only does Bellows feel his employees are entitled to discretion > around what they earn, he also knows that it's in the company's best > interest to avoid any negative feelings around discrepancies. Moreover, > there's nothing to be gained from sharing that information; it doesn't boost > trust, for example, or help team members assume more responsibility.

I strongly disagree with this. There is a _lot_ to be gained by sharing pay information openly. Compensation is indeed a very emotional topic, and it's one where unfairness naturally ends up accumulating if it's allowed to be secret. If you don't know exactly how much everyone in your company is being paid, you can bet your bottom dollar that there's some dodgy deals going on, with people being given extra raises and bonuses to make up for various issues in the organisation. And you can probably also safely assume that there's a gender pay gap.

Conversely, when everyone can see exactly how much everyone else is being paid, instead of having unfairness baked into the system you have open, often heated, passionate, and engaged discussions about how to fix the system to keep it fair. This is of course impossible: fairness is in the eye of the beholder; everyone has a different definition of fairness when it comes to compensation. So it's not possible to achieve! And so the discussion moves on to a meta level: how to be emotionally mature about this divergence of definition and design a system where everyone is happy with whatever compromises have been made around fairness.

Of course, this takes a lot more emotional maturity from people. It demands this of them. And so it pushes the company forwards in terms of personal growth - which is one of Bellows' stated aims and a Yesware company value.

I'd advise Yesware to embrace total internal transparency. It'll be hard. It'll be chaotic. But it'll push you further than you can possibly get without it.

Here's another example:

> Another transparency pitfall to look out for is the "too many cooks in the > kitchen" scenario — a common problem, Bellows notes, once a company grows > past five or ten people. If everyone has the same information, people begin > to feel entitled to weigh in anytime, even on decisions well outside their > qualifications. When that happens, keep clear boundaries.

Why be worried about people weighing in? It's only from a consensus mindset that you worry about too many people weighing in. If those people are only a little bit emotionally mature they know that ultimately the decision maker will be the one making the decision and that all they're doing is providing some input. Why does that need to feel threatening?

Too many cooks indicates that Yesware may have experimented with a consensus- based decision process and, quite rightly, found that it doesn't work. There are other decision models, like the fairly well known Advice Process (which can also work in hierarchical organisations - [http://danieltenner.com/2014/11/06/the-advice-process- defini...](http://danieltenner.com/2014/11/06/the-advice-process-definition- and-usage-tips/) ) which remove this problem by making sure that each decision has exactly one cook.

Of course, the Advice Process is, like most important things, deceptively simple, and takes discipline and thought to implement correctly.

Company culture is hard. Let's go shopping.

<comment><USER5> People weighing in on topics outside their expertise or in excess of what you need to make a good decision is a drain on the company, for both people providing input and those receiving it.

Take a software engineer weighing in on a legal matter (or vice-versa). What's productive for the end-customer in that interaction, even if the right expert still has the final say?

<comment><USER3> Good ideas often come from unexpected places. "Weighing in" makes it sound like some sort of ponderous, heavy process. It's just someone offering their advice. The expert is free to decide against that advice!</comment></comment></comment>


Why is processing a sorted array faster than an unsorted array? - aps-sids http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11227809/why-is-processing-a-sorted-array-faster-than-an-unsorted-array/11227902 <comment><AUTHOR> There are 22 previous posting to this SO question. See [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sorted%20unsorted%20array&sort...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sorted%20unsorted%20array&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) . The highest ranked, and also the one with the most comments (119) is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4637196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4637196) .</comment>


The quantum vacuum as the origin of the speed of light - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6165/

<comment><USER2> Just glanced through it and did not see the question of the speed of other massless particles (e.g. possibly neutrinos) adressed. They talk about an infinite bare velocity and that the finite speed of photons is due to multiple interactions. If that were the case, other particles that are less interacting than photons would go faster. I did not see this adressed anywhere in that paper (which, admittedly, I read rather quickly.)

</comment><comment><USER3> So, they're saying that light's speed of propagation is a function of the properties of the medium in which it propagates. In other words, michelson- morley experiment is bunk, no?</comment>


Has the FeeFighters Samurai gateway been shuttered? - <AUTHOR>

I spent several days setting up the Samurai payment gateway with a new product I'm building. I ran into a mysterious error, so I submitted a help request. No response for a week now. Their phone number isn't working, no response on twitter, no response over email.<p>Is anyone else using Samurai? The product looks excellent, but this support is abysmal. I see they were acquired by Groupon on 3/23, perhaps Groupon is dropping the gateway portion? <comment><USER2> Hey everyone -- integrating a company after an acquisition is hard. Several of the people who were involved in marketing and customer support left as part of the acquisition, and we needed to spend a few months building up a bigger team, integrating with Groupon, cleaning up some technical debt and increasing the scalability of the product.

Excellent support is important for payments products and it is something we are committed to, but not something that we can deliver at the moment. Thanks for being patient during the integration period.

Sean (co-founder of FeeFighters)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have an ETA on when you will be able to provide support again? It seems a bit crazy to allow new account registrations when you have no ability to actually support those customers, and there is zero mention of the application status anywhere on the site.

It's a shame, because the product seems great and it fits my needs perfectly, but if support isn't there then I have to move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They're still accepting accounts... Very odd. Stripe _is_ a lot easier to use, IMHO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - unfortunately my customers will likely have existing merchant accounts setup that they want to use, which Stripe doesn't support.</comment></comment>


Ticketmaster Is Evil And Must Die (StubHub mention) - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/5062273/ticketmaster-is-evil-and-must-die

<comment><USER2> I ran into this for the Treasure Island Music Festival. It cost $10 more to order online through TM than buy at the box office. This makes about as much sense to me as CDS financial transactions -- if TM wasn't a monopoly, no way this would be the status quo.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Cracks are finally starting to form in Ticketmaster's money-encrusted shell, but the competition doesn't inspire confidence. Everyone looks at Ticketmaster's 30% surcharge and thinks how good all that undeserved cash would look in their pocket."</comment>


Typely, free proofreading software - <AUTHOR> http://typely.com <comment><USER2> I tried it out on a few comments from the long google memo articles, and the response was good. Specially sentiment, and reading difficulty level.

One thing that was annoying was marking the word "very" as a weasel word -- in the instances it seemed correctly used. "Controversial" vs "very controversial".

Also, modern convention of using straight quotes ("") has become the norm. Marking these for change to curly quotes is just fighting against a change that's already occurred in written english -- alteast for phrases and not spoken sentences.

Good work! I'd especially like for this to be an offline-checker that the browser provides for all textboxes (the way spellcheck is today provided).

<comment><USER3> For professional typesetters, straight quotes are not the norm. Proper quotes are still expected. However, if you are not a typesetter, you don't really need to worry about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > A a sensitive, unobtrusive and reliable tool for any writer, newspaper > editor, teacher, blogger or student

> A a

I want with my whole heart to believe this was intentional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh no, it was not. I just uploaded that page last night. Good catch, thank you.

<comment><USER5> more:

> Typley is more than just a proofreading tool. It's a complete writing > environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can sort of buy that proper grammar-checking requires "human-level intelligence", but how is it possible to detect illogic, for instance, without the same? Typely would have to understand an argument's structure and actual meaning to prove logical soundness. Doesn't that require human-level intelligence, or at least as much as with a grammar-checking task?

<comment><AUTHOR> Typely is actually a huge list of regexes carefully targeted at exact bits. We don't do any text analysis beyond that and we try to stay away from being "too clever" which is a fine line that we don't want to cross.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No EULA or privacy statement on the website. Usually with these free services there is something in about using your data for profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, it's a "one man show" and I'm trying to do what I can with my time. The backend of this thing took so long that I pushed everything else too far and too early but I'm recovering.

I will add an eula and privacy. There is absolutely no data being stored or sent anywhere else. You will have to trust my words until I manage to upload those pages. I don't even have a marketing strategy yet, let alone selling "your data for profit". This tool was created for me and a short list of friends. Non of us are native English speakers/writers and I made typely to aid in writing.

Thank you for taking the time and I hope Typely can prove itself useful to you.

<comment><USER8> >Honestly,...

Strangely enough, your post, copied and pasted "verbatim" in Typely gave (besides "curly quotes"):

EASY TO READ Reading ease

FOURTH GRADE Grade level

RICH Vocabulary

NEGATIVE Sentiment analysis

I would personally rate it as "very positive" in sentiment ...

Heck!, I added the above sentence and also my "very" was tagged as "weasel word"!

<comment><AUTHOR> Since we don't have neutral sentiment baked in, it probably couldn't rate it as being positive because my post is, somewhat, apologizing.

It is easy to read and it is understandable by a fourth grader. The vocabulary was being reported as "Rich" due to the fact it's just a comment and does not repeat many "same" words. The story changes once you keep writing and the vocabulary will go down another level.

I have "in the works" some code to make the engine skip analysis for words inside quotes because of the clear indication of quoting someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this have an api / plans to have an api / way to access it programmatically, or perhaps some of the tools are open source?

I've been building a spam/scam filter as a hobby, and some of these metrics might be useful to rank messages by spam probability. The spam bots aren't very sophisticated so I've been able to make very specific targeted metrics to make a spam rating without having to think about advanced spam detection, but I'd love to be able to have access to "reading level" and "vocabulary" metrics and stuff that I'm not inclined to make from the ground up on my own.

</comment><comment><USER10> After visiting the page, with a typo, its still unclear to me what it does.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a tool that analyzes your text against a huge list of common mistakes writers usually do. The typos are fixed and pushed, CI is baking them now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the sample loaded text:

> "Me and Brian got scared" > "Brian and me is the correct form"

This isn't true. "Brian and I got scared" is the correct form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken. My goal was to stop people from starting their sentence using 'Me and ...'. I guess I didn't give it enough thought and simply swapped the words.</comment></comment>