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Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#251

Post by dragonwriter »

dukeluke wrote: post #241
dragonwriter wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The electoral college was designed so that slave states, who got extra seats in the House compared to their population of citizens through the 3/5 compromise, would have Presidential electoral power proportional to the degree to which they were overrepresented in Congress, rather than in line with their number of voting citizens. It is designed as a positive reward for the remaining enfranchised population for disenf…

Don't race bait. The issue was a lot more nuanced than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_St...

I'm not race baiting, its really not a lot more nuanced (the popular alternative explanation is the sales pitch made to New Yorkers to get them to buy off on the scheme, because we've taken 18th Century campaign propaganda as unvarnished truth as part of our national cult of veneration of the four ding fathers), and your source doesn't even address the motivations (well, it briefly addresses one participants description of the reason of the change from the Virginia Plan, which had the same salient features and served the same purpose, to the EC, but that doesn't address why the basic alignment with Congressional representation underlying both the Virginia Plan and EC was chosen; the reason, like the 3/5 compromise and the express protection of the slave trade.in the Constitution, was to overrepresent the slave states and alleviate their fears that the long term course was toward abolition), only the mechanics and the history of operations under it.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#252

Post by sillysaurus3 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #228
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middle class wealth. Here's a quick not fully vetted interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immedi…

A couple things you should do, if you want to have better discussions: First, you should stop quoting pg's essays as though they were infallible sources of truth. It's not helping your argument. I like some of his essays; others are misleading or dead wrong (for example: http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm ). Empirical evidence always beats philosophical pondering; shawn-furyan provided data that…

You're reading much too far into my comments. I posted the quotes to see what other people think of them, nothing more. If the response is that data beats logic, then that's a fine point.

you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who don't understand simple concepts

This is a personal attack, though. Please don't do that.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#253

Post by realusername »

clarkmoody wrote: post #207
thowar2 wrote: post #34

Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy. 2) The current goals for education do not align with current…

As long as education is controlled by government, directional decisions will be made politically. Try bringing up the idea of shrinking class sizes by eliminating the football program at your next town-hall and see what happens. The only lasting solution will be to allow true market competition for education to replace the centralized top-down system we have. Yes, it's a libertarian pipe dream. No, I don't want to he…

We've never tried what? Private schools? I don't see how this would work since schools are always expensive to run by nature and the working class is getting poorer (for those still having a revenue), I don't see this working very well.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#254

Post by dukeluke »

dragonwriter wrote: post #251
dukeluke wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't race bait. The issue was a lot more nuanced than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_St...

I'm not race baiting, its really not a lot more nuanced (the popular alternative explanation is the sales pitch made to New Yorkers to get them to buy off on the scheme, because we've taken 18th Century campaign propaganda as unvarnished truth as part of our national cult of veneration of the four ding fathers), and your source doesn't even address the motivations (well, it briefly addresses one participants descript…

I provided a source that says there were more considerations than slavery. Can you please provide a legitimate source that proves otherwise?

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#255

Post by cadlin »

sparkzilla wrote: post #79
mjolk wrote: post #58

> News: We’re facing two major issues with news. The first is fake news. The business model for online media rewards the people who get the greatest number of page views, clicks and likes. That results in a system that prizes virality over truth. This is insanely difficult as interpersonal trust is expensive and getting first-hand information/data is extremely non-trivial. I agree that "mainstream media" (quotes beca…

Paul Graham is right that it has to be something you want to do, but it is possible to build large new media sites on short attention spans -- if your site is designed for them. My site, an actual working solution to the problem of both fake news and bias, is doing great (Over three million page views last month). However, we most likely won't apply to YC this time, or ever again, due to Sam Altman's anti-Trump bias.

No offense, but looking at your website, you've solved the problem of fake news by not showing any news. Unless you're talking about no bias in UFC news specifically.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#256

Post by sealthedeal »

Cleisthenes wrote: post #186
thowar2 wrote: post #34

Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy. 2) The current goals for education do not align with current…

Using public education for any form of job training is one of the gravest mistakes that has put us in the current position. The reason for public education is to have an informed citizenry able to participate fully in society. Using it as job training is just corporate welfare, that is using tax money to pay for something businesses should do themselves. There is often overlap in the skills needed in an informed citi…

agreed

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#257

Post by jayajay »

Oh boy, fake news is just getting started! People are scared now? Wait until an entity can generate your voice saying whatever they want it to say, generate your body doing whatever they want it to do, generate scenes and events which never happened.

Fake news now is less effective against well-educated, smart, skeptical, scientific people. It just so happens that fake news is dumb enough to only fool 80% of us. As the methods for generating false information ("fake news" is not a general term) get more advanced, people will need to be more and more educated to resist falling into machine dependency.

If you're gonna get on the fake news train, do it now, as fake news is easy right now. Bots are still dumb, etc. In the future it won't be so easy to combat fake news. It will be a much, much more grave problem. If there are people who are uneducated enough to be influenced by fake news now, they will be sheep in the future even more so, when they are told lies of events, audio clips, video clips, etc. that never even happened.

Fake news, or more generally, false information, is going to be a big problem in the 22nd century. As our machines get smarter, so do our deception methods. At some point, humans will begin to place trust in machines because we will no longer be smart enough to figure it out ourselves. Currently the non-savvy population (maybe, ~80%?) has begun to do this already. At what point will our scientists begin to fall on the same side of that partition, until only a few scientists in the top of their field actually get it. We have already observed this God-Effect in esoteric fields.

God-Effect: Where a piece of technology, mathematics, or code becomes so complicated, eventually only a few people (or zero) actually understand it. E.g. complicated edge-physics, library implementations, encrypted data, etc.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#258

Post by panic »

thowar2 wrote: post #34

Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy. 2) The current goals for education do not align with current…

To fix education, our first priority should be to empower teachers. They're the ones who care the most about kids' learning and know the best how to make it happen. Teaching shouldn't be a low-paying, low-status profession. I'm not sure how you could change that with a YC startup.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#259

Post by RangerScience »

logfromblammo wrote: post #206
RangerScience wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm down-voting you, here's why: Instead of claiming that we can't have that discussion, why not try to have that discussion ?

Okay, I'll bite. How do the workers so recently unemployed by the automated machines gain ownership of those machines in a way that does not entirely remove the incentive for building them?

Something of a loaded question, but more, a super hard question.

Your question is loaded because it assumes that ownership of such machines is the best solution for those made unemployed by them - I think this is probably flawed, because management is a different skill set than direct contribution.

The problem is that the worker's skills have lost value. They need new skills - management skills for owning the machines, or different skills that haven't been automated yet.

Or maybe a refinement on their existing skills. My understanding of Japanese factories is that it's commonplace to have one of the fabrication lines done by people - the thinking goes: "If you do not know how to do it better, how can you make machines do it better?". I also remember a story of, I think it was GE, getting their designers, engineers, and assemblers (the people literally putting the pieces together) all together to improve the design. The assemblers noted a particularly difficult step, and in making that step easier, the engineers removed a number of parts. Everything got better.

Let's look at the other part of your question - incentives for building the automation. It seems like the R&D incentive comes from the end-user value, so let's skip to that - I want an automated machine for a number of reasons: Quality consistency, up time, wage cost reduction, safety. Eventually, all of these do boil down to "profit", but the routes taken are important. QC means you can sell more and/or charge more; but you could make more and charge less in ways that make more or less profit.

I don't think I can answer your question, because I don't know why you think that the incentives for building them would be removed; and in my head, the first blocker for the recently unemployed to own such machines is wanting to run a business. I don't think most people want that.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#260

Post by shawn-furyan »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #218
shawn-furyan wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actual analysis from The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which uses long running public (easily accessible) data from the Census Bureau, the BDS report[1], suggests that income inequality hurts startup creation rather than helping it. Note: The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middl…

The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a good proxy for middle class wealth. Here's a quick not fully vetted interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immedi…

> He addresses this line of logic

He doesn't, and it's not a line of logic, it's an interpretation of the evidence. Graham didn't even look at the evidence, and came to a conclusion that becomes very hard to support once you've had a glance at a chart of the available evidence (i.e. deep analysis isn't required to recognize that his proposed mechanism is flawed).

Also, you should really heed my 3rd note. You cannot speak effectively on income inequality without having read Picketty. It is by far the most significant treatment on the subject. It goes far beyond my simple counterpuntal analysis here to bat down a poorly thought out and completely unresearched pure logical argument. At least read a couple informed reviews of Picketty. I seem to recall FT, the Economists, Mankiew and Krugman having worthwhile, messy and conflicting thoughts after it was published. Graham just is not a useful resource on income inequality.

To address your point: Yes, Macro 101 makes it clear that trade multiplies wealth, thus wealth is non-static. The Graham argument you cite is incredibly elementary, and he is not the source to be citing on the topic. That particular question is miles more elementary than any discussion of the impacts of income inequality on macroeconomic factors. Bringing it up when talking about Income Inequality is kind of like citing a clunky explanation of Newton's 2nd law of motion in a discussion about time dilation effects of supersonic flight (which relies on non-Newtonian physics). To wit, analysis of Income inequality requires going beyond the overly simplistic macroeconomic models that have led Economists to mispredict the effects of income inequality for so long. Macro 101 is not useful here. The current evidence in the field is conter-intuitive and difficult to reconcile for expert economists.

Also, again, Graham's essay is very outdated and has, to be charitable, been surpassed by more careful and thorough resources on the topic.

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