A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#391

Post by cvlasdkv » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

michaelcampbell wrote: post #372

cvlasdkv wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot to unpack here. > The common man isn't expected to understand tariffs, international banking, military theory, computer engineering, social justice issues, and food scarcity. What better use is there of the common man's time than understanding societal issues like justice and scarcity? Are you describing how the world is or claiming how it should be? If you do not understand justice, scarcity, etc. how can you…

> > The common man isn't expected to understand tariffs, international banking, military theory, computer engineering, social justice issues, and food scarcity. > What better use is there of the common man's time than understanding societal issues like justice and scarcity? Both of those can be true.

Hence my question of whether the OP is prescriptive or descriptive.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#392

Post by kybernetikos » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

cvlasdkv wrote: post #348

blaser-waffle wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My IT director doesn't know every facet of what is in our environment, and generally is not up to date as to what changes are happening on the day to day. And he doesn't need to be. The point of high-level workers is so they can focus on high-level priorities. They have staff -- legal aids, system admins, business analysts, whatever -- whose job it is to digest that stuff and put it into simple briefings for leadersh…

A lot to unpack here. > The common man isn't expected to understand tariffs, international banking, military theory, computer engineering, social justice issues, and food scarcity. What better use is there of the common man's time than understanding societal issues like justice and scarcity? Are you describing how the world is or claiming how it should be? If you do not understand justice, scarcity, etc. how can you…

> An uneducated populace voting is a worst-case scenario for a representative democracy.

I'd probably say that the worst-case scenario is a populace that doesn't care whether their representative is educated on the issues.

There are many things that I consider myself uneducated in, but as long as my representative has similar values, is not corrupt, is competent and finds and listens to experts in the relevant fields, then I don't necessarily consider that to be a problem.

We should be electing people we trust to care about the detail of stuff that doesn't interest normal humans, not people we'd like to have a beer with.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#393

Post by pessimizer » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #278

wegs wrote: post #249

A much more thoughtful treatment of this problem is "The Dictator's Handbook." There are three possible explanations: 1) The CEO knows something I don't. 2) The CEO is dumb. Those are rarely it. The third one is: 3) The CEO is optimizing for personal wealth / fame / success, and there are political considerations. Most CEOs can recognize that a business decision can be absolutely the right thing to do for the busines…

It blows my mind how people can come here and attempt to write a serious answer claiming the CEO "rarely" knows something his armchair critic doesn't (as a basis for their "bad" decision). Then proceed to peddle cliches and conspiracies. Also, shareholders aren't stupid, they usually reward CEOs for good business decisions and so does the board. Sometimes it's unclear what is better long-term and short-term results a…

Self-interest is only a conspiracy theory as far as all economics is a conspiracy theory.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#394

Post by pkroll » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #272

leonroy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even I thought Disney plus might be the beginning of the end for Netflix, that it finally met a Goliath it couldn't best, but now even that isnt obvious anymore. I think Disney painted themselves in a corner buying every studio and putting it under the Disney banner. Disney have long stood for family values programming which is never edgy or pushes the envelope. That was the reason behind Touchstone and the purchas…

They know this and have a way around it. Disney holds a controlling majority of Hulu. That's why they push the Disney+/Hulu+/ESPN+ combo so hard and put all the edgier stuff on Hulu. You can watch Pulp Fiction on Hulu with the Starz add-on. Hulu is their big aggregation play.

Just to be pedantic: Disney owns Hulu entirely, now, they bought out Comcast (and got Fox's share when they bought Fox). https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2019/05/14/disney-b...

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#395

Post by p1necone » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #360

nemothekid wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if that’s a given. People going back to piracy sort of assumes people will happily walk back to watching sketchy streams on laptop screens. I think the bar will pretty high for people who wish to watch on Apple Devices, Rokus or Smart TVs. There has been enough time for people to get locked into walled gardens.

Piracy in 2020 is more polished than first party streaming platforms.

Not going to link anything here, but certain PLEX/freeNAS plugins can basically let you make your own Netflix, complete with slick UI, but all the content.

However most people don't have the requisite knowledge to set all of this up, so I would agree with the other commenter that the majority are probably still going to just go to sketchy streaming sites.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#396

Post by solidasparagus » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:24 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #379

solidasparagus wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> average S&P 500 company now lives fewer than 20 years No, the average age of an S&P 500 company is now less than 20 years. Which is heavily influenced by the rise of technology and the many S&P 500 companies that were created in the last ~20 years. It does not mean that companies are dying faster, just that S&P 500 is filled with young companies.

I don't think that's correct, at least according to this soruce ( https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/why-you-will... ) "A recent study by McKinsey found that the average life-span of companies listed in Standard & Poor’s 500 was 61 years in 1958. Today, it is less than 18 years. McKinsey believes that, in 2027, 75% of the companies currently quoted on the S&P 500 will have disappeared. They will be bough…

I didn't see any evidence backing up their estimates nor any number that represent how many former S&P 500 companies go out of business. The studies I could find listed some of the companies that fell out of the S&P500 and AFAICT most of them still exist.

I would be careful about taking McKinsey's carefully crafted quotes and projections at face value. 'Disappeared' is intentionally vague. They also intentionally use age of a company when talking about the past and tenure on the S&P500 when talking about the future to make the numbers seem more dramatic[1]. It's part of their sales pitch - "it's harder than ever to run a company so you should really hire a consulting company to save you".

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Electri... (page 4)

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#397

Post by thisisbrians » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #185

I feel like what isn't really properly understood in these situations is the statistical chances that are involved here. 10 people put $50 on the roulette table, and then we celebrate the guy who hit their number. That genius who hit their number still had a negative expected value when placing that bet. Colette Martin would've been right to criticize Reed Hastings if he were making that bet with Netflix's money. But…

Sounds like the VC model, or the found-a-startup model. I came here to say basically this. Well put! Survivorship bias is a huge problem in the way of explaining success.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#398

Post by joe_the_user » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #321

A similar story that I love regarding the infamous Van Halen brown M&M contract rider: “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the…

But this isn't like that at all. The Brown M&M is a clever hack that seems weird (and that gets posted here over and over and over...).

What's going on here is simultaneously much more mundane and much more interesting.

A given strategy at a corporate level is something like a 10 dimensional cube, with half of those dimensions within the company and half of those side outside. It begins as a concept floated by those in charge, it gets floated to people who float it to people who finally put out another version, say, a 5 dimensional cube. And final thing has requested qualities, with some things added simply as CYA, things that aren't good but the low level operative can't be criticized for.

Sometimes this process result in a dimension that a moderately intelligent person can look at and say "that's moronic, that would never work" and it doesn't.

The thing is, indeed, the critic doesn't see even the 5 released dimensions of the whatever-the-fuck that's being sold so they don't know the difficulties involved. Because the thingy is trying to barely satisfy each of these dimensions, not be great in any of them. Because these are all constraints,

Why push out a crappy version of Windows (say Vista), why produce yet another fail sequel in series X, etc. Sure, when such satisficing projects fail, the dumb stuff seems obvious but people forgot that so many projects succeed by just barely missing the bar of inadequate and so some are going to have to hit the bar too, in one of those dimensions.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#399

Post by compiler-guy » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

PakG1 wrote: post #86

georgespencer wrote: post #17

This article puts it better than I ever could. I had a similar reaction when I read extremely critical press coverage of some VCs in Europe investing in YPlan, which eventually sold for a nominal amount to Time Out London. The synopsis of all the coverage was: "How could they have spent all that money? And how could the investors have been so STUPID?" My friend Fred Destin wrote a great essay on this[1], and I'll do…

Regarding sports. Unfortunately, let's not discount the politics and human nature involved in fielding a team. Some players get to play because of their salary, some players get to play because of their relationship with the coach, some players get to play because they're trade bait, some coaches really are wrong, etc. https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/maple-leafs... Coaches are human too. They are jus…

The other thing is that player evaluation is an extremely imprecise science. For example, even with all the information modern professional sports scouts get about their prospects, many new players still wash out and are busts. The science just isn't precise enough to give definitive answers (and it's possible that science can't give answers in some of these cases). So there are a large number of judgement calls to be made, even with all the information available.

A fan might be correct when they say, "Coach should have played X instead of Y.", but the trick is knowing that in advance. And knowing hundreds of other things in advance too. Maybe coach got that one decision wrong, but hundreds of others right. The fan is unlikely to get that many correct on a percentage basis.

Re: A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011)

#400

Post by renewiltord » Wed, May 27, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

doorstar wrote: post #325

I kept thinking this when the 'cybertruck' was unveiled. Suddenly everyone around me was explaining in detail why this truck was going to be a complete fiasco and a danger to everyone else on the road. I'll happily acknowledge that Musk is off his rocker, but can people really think that he doesn't know how to make a car? ( I'll admit a soft spot for the thing after someone pointed out it looks like what happens when…

HN's predictions are solidly in "less space than a nomad" territory. I think the predictive value is nil. I think it might be slightly negative, i.e. if you trade on the naive opposite of the aggregate HN opinion, you might make money simply out of HN's anti-incumbency predilection combined with the Lindy effect.

The classic Dropbox comments and the glee at FB hitting some low stock price, $19?