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No More “Insight Porn”

jakobgreenfeld.com

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Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#311
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLCs let you avoid having personal liability for accidents, corporate malfeasance, etc. They don't let you avoid having to invest your own money into the company to try to make it go, because no one else cares enough about your idea to do so, then lose it all if it fails. Having something like universal basic income absolutely does not reduce the risk to zero. What it does is it reduces the penalty for failure —failu…

LLCs do provide limitations towards losing your life savings or home. They create a buffer between personal and corporate assets. I think a key difference is the benefits are targeted towards those who are trying to create value, whereas UBI is much less targeted. At least from an economic sense, LLCs seem like a much more efficient mechanism.

Sure, they prevent you losing those things if the company loses more money than it has and the creditors want to come after you personally.

They don't prevent you losing those things if you invested your life savings in the company, and you mortgaged your home to invest more. Which are both things that people trying to get companies off the ground do, especially if they don't otherwise have the means to do so.

If you're considering the primary purpose of a UBI as being encouraging entrepreneurship, then sure, they're not that efficient. I do not consider that to be its primary purpose, nor have I yet spoken to anyone who does. It is one of many, many benefits to a UBI that should be considered.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's some good insight porn right there! ...and yet, all poor people know it by heart (unless they were born into a rich family that has just fallen from grace), , because it's totally true. For more good insight: wealthy families know a lot more about how to make money when you have some money. Poor families know a lot more about avoiding the risk of being totally broke from an unlucky event, because they know t…

Somewhat true except for the fact that education isn't fixed. It's a variable that changes. You might start with little wealth and accumulate education on your journey. Therefore in the early years when you lose wealth it's difficult to accumulate more, but over time it can become easier as you are more educated and experienced. Having little wealth when young also allows you to live on very little - when combined wi…

Right, education is a form of capital.

Which means that those who begin with more of it will have a head-start which grows exponentially, leaving behind those which start with none of it.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#313
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLCs do provide limitations towards losing your life savings or home. They create a buffer between personal and corporate assets. I think a key difference is the benefits are targeted towards those who are trying to create value, whereas UBI is much less targeted. At least from an economic sense, LLCs seem like a much more efficient mechanism.

Sure, they prevent you losing those things if the company loses more money than it has and the creditors want to come after you personally. They don't prevent you losing those things if you invested your life savings in the company, and you mortgaged your home to invest more. Which are both things that people trying to get companies off the ground do, especially if they don't otherwise have the means to do so. If you…

[deleted]

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expected value is really a dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets. I can't believe even supposedly good mathematicians use it. The next dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets is to compare it with other long odds (lightning strikes, marrying your favorite actor). If you want to play along, the probability of you winning the lottery is 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of you existing in this universe. B…

If buying a lottery ticket is a good idea, isn’t buying two better? How about spending everything you have on lottery tickets? Odds are the upside for you is still much larger than the downside. Maybe you’re saying that buying a single lottery ticket improves your odds of winning the lotto so much (infinitely many times in fact) that you just need one. There are a lot of lotteries in the world so.. get one of each? A…

No they aren't.

Go back to the framework

Upside(Gain) / Downside(Risk) is a pretty simple framework.

All I'm saying is, Downside(Risk) is not f(Expected Value)

Downside(Risk) is not f(p(winning))

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#316

A crackhead never says "I have no money, I guess I'm not smoking any crack today". Instead, they will go to an abandoned building and strip all the copper wiring out of it. Don't let a crackhead out-hustle you today.

This would be horrible advice if it were not completely useless. As it is, it's only disgusting. I don't find it inspirational, and there is nothing actionable.

I think you missed the sarcasm/ humor in the post you are responding to.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#317
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what he was saying was that the probability of you winning the lottery is quite high compared to the probability of you existing in the first place. His point was that mathematicians sometimes try to contextualize these very low probability scenarios so that lay-people don't collapse them all into a single "basically impossible" bucket. They're not wrong, but it's not a useful way to think about whether buying a…

I'll quote: "the probability of you winning the lottery is 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of you existing in this universe". That statement is categorically wrong. If you're going to consider the probability of my ever coming to existence in the first place, you need to count it as part of the probability of winning the lottery too. If it had said "the probability of anybody winning" I would've c…

> I'll quote: "the probability of you winning the lottery is 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of you existing in this universe". That statement is categorically wrong.

Yup -- it was written in a universe where the poster they replied to exists, so that probability is = 1 here.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#318
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re conflating 2 different things. You mention adjusting tactics and strategies, even goals, based on circumstances. This is what “playing the cards you have” is . You do what you can with what you’ve got. Giving up before you start doesn’t help because it’s a shut down. You don’t even get to the part of assessing viability and weighing risk. The point is that if you want a change on whatever dimension you…

> Giving up before you start doesn’t help because it’s a shut down. You don’t even get to the part of assessing viability and weighing risk. Now you're adding "before you start", who said that until you did? Ok, what if instead you've gotten to the part of assessing viability and weighing risk and then decided not to go down that path, of, say, founding a startup. > What that something is depends on the cards you hav…

> Now you're adding "before you start", who said that until you did?

That was already in the comment your own (G)GP[1] was a reply to, so they're certainly not adding it "now."

> I don't totally understand what we're disagreeing about. Or what you mean when you say "it doesn't help" -- help who do what?

As I was going to reply to your (G)GP[1]: Help anyone with whatever it was they didn't even start on doing. Be it running a marathon or starting a company or... What does it matter? Isn't it obvious that if you never start training for a marathon, that won't help you run one? And that the same goes for starting a company -- if you never even start starting a company, then you'll never get to the point of having started a company? And the same for anything you might want to do?

What I don't understand is how anyone can honestly claim not to understand that.

___

[1]: Grandparent of your comment that I'm replying to; great-grandparent of this my reply.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop pretending theses things aren't luck? Sure, there's merit involved - but that's a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. There's a million competent people having basically the same drive and capability. The thing that makes a difference is luck. Period. Please note: this doesn't mean that succesful people don't deserve the success - most times they do. It's just that there are many more people, equal…

The word fortunate includes an aspect of luck. Successful people are successful because they put themselves out into the world to expand their fortune. They seize common opportunities and make them great. Those opportunities come back around like the original comment. The whole idea of "building one's fortune" or having a "fortune be told" instills in the idea that your actions are what influences your chance of bein…

> The word fortunate includes an aspect of luck.

Yeah, I think that was what the GP meant: ~ "Back then, people could admit that it's largely a matter of luck."

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#320

Why does everything have to be some kind "porn" nowadays. Does anybody seriously think this is funny?

I agree, I really don't like the turn of phrase. It's kinda gross.

Well, good: Then it works kind of like a warning, too. Tells that this shit is kind of icky.
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