161–170 of 261 posts
In the case of Bitcoin, being such a foray into uncharted territory, I'm unsure of how you would be good at the meta game, or figure out how racoons will abuse your radical new idea. Maybe I need to improve my meta game, heh.
I really enjoyed this article. Summary Coyotes are too clever because they know that people shaking jars full of coins can’t hurt them. Thus the animal control patrol has to get called and when they don’t shoo, the animal control person who loves animals has to shoot the coyote. Coyotes are winning the mini-game of each human interaction, but they are losing the meta-game of what society will do if coyotes aren’t sca…
Oh no, poor finance jerkoffs got ripped off by their own cleverness. Nothing says dbag like Alabama man who now lives in Connecticut crying over dead asshole financial firms. We've had 4 (or more) of these banking/finance ripoffs in my fucking lifetime. Bankers and finance assholes are the scourge of mankind. I got a degree in Finance just so I could avoid the bullshit these fucking assholes use to rip everyone off.…
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Maybe try to figure out how to make the work fun? Or, try and instill a goal less of "getting the grade" and more "attain mastery of the subject"? I would have been burnt in college, except I got to homeschool the last few years of high school. During that time I took CLEP tests. They were pretty easy for the most part, but they required I actually do the reading and prepare for them. That helped, since in school I j…
> Maybe try to figure out how to make the work fun? I don't think this is the right approach, because you need the ability to focus on work even when it is not fun. You do need something that makes the work rewarding in some way, but I wouldn't push to hard to try to make it fun. > Or, try and instill a goal less of "getting the grade" and more "attain mastery of the subject"? This was my approach in high school as w…
> I don't think this is the right approach, because you need the ability to focus on work even when it is not fun.
this is just coming from my personal experience, but i think it is very important for a kid to have a job sometime in the high school years. my parents are fairly well off and they "protected" me from this need by just giving me spending money (sometimes for a trivial amount of chores, but usually just free money), so that a menial job would not distract me from my studies. of course, i just spent that money on frivolous things and outings with friends that distracted me from school anyway, and i ended up doing quite poorly (though i made it most of the way through a fairly prestigious school before it caught up with me).
eventually i transferred to a regional (but still quite rigorous) university and had to get a restaurant job to pay my expenses. i learned a whole lot about the world real fast. it wasn't so much that i learned about the value of steady work, but rather that low wage jobs in low margin industries really slam home the point that you will never have anything unless you put in the work, and i worked real hard from that point on. i still have bouts of procrastination, but i never just let things slide now, and every time i spend a dollar i feel the amount of my own labor that i am letting go.
The author describes how coyotes win the "skirmish game" when they casually walk into suburban yards and demonstrate that they are not afraid of the humans when they do things to scare them away such as make loud noises at them. However, they lose the "meta-game" when animal control shows up and puts them down because they won't go away. The author uses this analogy to compare coyotes to financial innovators. His arg…
Okay. Let's slow down here: The OP says. >> And they’re not that smart. I’d put our barn cat up against a raccoon any day on any sort of cognitive test. We think raccoons are clever because they have those anthropomorphic paws and those cute little masks and even a Marvel superhero with its own toy line, but please. Raccoons are takers, not schemers. From Wikipedia >> Zoologist Clinton Hart Merriam described raccoons…
The true meta-gamer of the story snuck by with a single sentence reference. So I'm calling you out barn cat. You think you can sneak by having your cake and keeping your solidarity and standoff distance from the humans but also benefit from the free housing + healthcare + steady food when you don't want to kill mice + affection when you decide to wander over to the main house. But I'm onto you.
Actually the parasite infestation (fleas), lack of affection and food when they want it (except through hard work), temperature variations, etc...make the barn cat a misanthrope. Every house cat owner knows that the house cat is the 'meta game mastermind'. Hell, they've engineered the system to care about their safety so much that it is cruelty to have them reproduce via the species own painful biology. Letting them…
Every cat I have owned has been an indoor-outdoor cat. There are downsides. They tend to be less affectionate and more independent than house cats, but they also seem healthier and happier than the indoor cats I have known.
Also they don't need a litter box. That is a biggy.
This is unrelated, but they mention The Great Financial Crisis which made me remember the Recession of my youth. It devastated my family. My father was in construction. That market seriously ebbs. I remember a faint feeling I had back then: resentment towards families who happened to be in industries that weren’t hit. Not because I thought it was unfair that we were hit, I just resented that they didn’t even have to…
Reminds me of what I've heard called a Czech fable: A poor farmer whose livestock is a single dairy cow goes to the field one morning to milk the cow and discovers that she's dead. He falls to his knees and looks skyward, shaking his fists and cursing God for his misfortune. Suddenly a voice is heard from the heavens: "Your cries have reached me, my son. Tell me what you would like me to do." The farmer gazes upward…
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Actually the parasite infestation (fleas), lack of affection and food when they want it (except through hard work), temperature variations, etc...make the barn cat a misanthrope. Every house cat owner knows that the house cat is the 'meta game mastermind'. Hell, they've engineered the system to care about their safety so much that it is cruelty to have them reproduce via the species own painful biology. Letting them…
I'm not a fan of having house cats. Indoor only cats develop weird psychological issues at a rate that makes me suspect that living inside isn't all that healthy for them. Every cat I have owned has been an indoor-outdoor cat. There are downsides. They tend to be less affectionate and more independent than house cats, but they also seem healthier and happier than the indoor cats I have known. Also they don't need a l…
In all seriousness I would rather take the time to care for a house cat than to deal with the possibility of roadkill/injury, disease, pests or other accidents of nature. If the cat is a problem for you then don't own one?
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I also realized this which made me game the whole schooling system. I didn't study and had a poor attendance but still got an award for the being the school's best student. Pretty crazy when I think about it. Suffice to say, my strategy didn't work very well in university.
High-five, fellow "burned by needing to do real work in university" high schooler :(