191–200 of 313 posts
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It is good, but still low-bandwidth. Perhaps the reason for compulsively refreshing the homepage is that we just can't get enough. Any suggestions about how to make better online environments for people who care about similar things?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=202096
All of the city messages in the essay should be qualified with to the most ambitious people within that city or even more narrowly to this particular community of ambitious people. Put another way, within a given community of the most ambitions people in a given city, what is their metric for success? I went to MIT for undergrad and grad, and then lived around there for several years thereafter. I do not think that C…
All of the city messages in the essay should be qualified with to the most ambitious people within that city or even more narrowly to this particular community of ambitious people. Put another way, within a given community of the most ambitions people in a given city, what is their metric for success? I went to MIT for undergrad and grad, and then lived around there for several years thereafter. I do not think that C…
As a programmer I heard "you should get a security clearance" many times. The amount of people aspiring to government sloth in DC is astounding. DC is not a place to be if you want to build things.
I guess in New York I feel "You should be an investment banker". It is still amazing to me that lawyers aren't all that impressive in New York, they are also rans compared to financial workers.
Yes the finance industry is huge in New York, but so is media. Media people are mostly young and paid very little. I think I read that the average starting salary for someone with a college degree in New York is $36,000.
What's more noble to try to live somewhere else that encourages intellectual ambition or to try to improve the condition of where you are?
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"I make sure I come back home to HN and mingle with the people who live here" Me too. Nice observation, the virtual city. The result of choice, not circumstance.
"The result of choice, not circumstance." There seems to be this popular belief that admitting you are influenced by your environment is a sign of weakness. I just gave a presentation for my ethics class was on why the "trolley problem" is a logical fallacy. My argument was that you could create a system to flip the switch that completely circumvented the individual as a moral agent. For example, you could create a s…
What if, say, your spouse is really into acting and loves the Los Angeles area... it might be very hard for them to find the same happiness in Cambridge, just as you might be harder-pressed to be as academic as you want to be in L.A.
I think a fair question is, if, for whatever reason, you can't move to an area that would well-support your ambitions, what can you do to improve your environment? Surely the best answer isn't "nothing, just resign yourself to live your life in obscurity and failure"...
The New York you're talking about is also a minority. From the outside, Wall Street and Madison Avenue may seem to dominate. From the inside, they're barely noticeable unless you're in that world. Wall Street and Madison Avenue are swept up in the endless current of people just like the gay Puerto Rican teens who hang out above Pier 40 on Friday nights in the summer.
The depth and breadth of "New York" is what makes it truly great. New York has so many worlds swirling around you that you'll never fully understand -- it's humbling and exhilarating to the core. New York's "ambition" is the endless hope of all of those minorities from countless directions -- the ambition you're talking about is much more one dimensional.