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Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

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Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#61

Post by the_cat_kittles »

raldi wrote: post #42
bdcravens wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuban's stake in Broadcast.com's was worth about $100M before they sold to Yahoo, and since the sale to Yahoo, he's managed to over double his net worth via the Mavericks and his business interests. He may not be Gates, but I think he's more than a lottery winner.

He would be wealthier today if he had immediately put everything in an S&P 500 index fund and spent the last 20 years ignoring it.

thank you. this is always something people forget. if you want to claim you are a good business man, you need to show that your businesses do better than an index fund.

Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#62

Post by programmer_dude »

cooper12 wrote: post #10
kk58 wrote: post #4

Ai hypers dont spend a min building ML models or munging data. Its so far away before AI can do all

This guy doesn't even know how to program. Some exec probably bamboozled his gullible self and now he's trying to making an ass of himself in headlines.

https://www.forbes.com/pictures/mme45gmef/mark-cuban-the-pro...

Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#63

Post by dannylandau »

bdcravens wrote: post #44
dannylandau wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was around $1.4B, not $100M -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast.com

That's the sale to Yahoo. From that article: "After the IPO, the company was worth $1 billion, Mark Cuban was worth $300 million" (obviously a little more than the $100m I thought)

I think the issue that people have with Mark Cuban's accumulated wealth is that it was during the Internet Bubble, and the stock would have been worthless just a few months later. I think Yahoo basically discounted the price of Broadcast a year later to zero.

Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#64

Post by adventured »

bdcravens wrote: post #44
dannylandau wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was around $1.4B, not $100M -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast.com

That's the sale to Yahoo. From that article: "After the IPO, the company was worth $1 billion, Mark Cuban was worth $300 million" (obviously a little more than the $100m I thought)

Broadcast.com had $100m in revenue for fiscal 1999. Maybe that's what you were thinking of.

Cuban's position was worth more on paper at its peak before the Yahoo acquisition. Broadcast.com was acquired for $130 per share, the high that year before the acquisition, was $144 per share.

Prior to the acquisition, the stock was trading at $118. Yahoo only paid a 10% premium. Cuban was worth over a billion dollars before the acquisition.

https://www.cnet.com/news/yahoo-broadcast-com-sizzle-after-d...

Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#65

Post by cooper12 »

programmer_dude wrote: post #62
cooper12 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy doesn't even know how to program. Some exec probably bamboozled his gullible self and now he's trying to making an ass of himself in headlines.

https://www.forbes.com/pictures/mme45gmef/mark-cuban-the-pro...

Okay, he does know how to program. But he still doesn't know fuck-all about AI.

Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#66

Post by adventured »

raldi wrote: post #42
bdcravens wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuban's stake in Broadcast.com's was worth about $100M before they sold to Yahoo, and since the sale to Yahoo, he's managed to over double his net worth via the Mavericks and his business interests. He may not be Gates, but I think he's more than a lottery winner.

He would be wealthier today if he had immediately put everything in an S&P 500 index fund and spent the last 20 years ignoring it.

That's factually wrong.

The S&P 500 was 1300 when he sold to Yahoo. He received $1.4 billion of Yahoo (14.6m shares at $95/each). He had to pay taxes on clearing out that position as well, so you can safely assume his after tax position was more like ~$1.1 billion. He very solidly beat the S&P 500.

He's worth $4.08 billion today according to Bloomberg (ranked #500 on their global rich list). He has increased his net worth by nearly 4x.

The S&P 500 is at 2747. It has just over doubled since April 1999. He'd be missing a billion dollars if he had gone with the S&P 500, including any dividends.

He was better off with what he did, he beat the S&P 500 index fund. Not only did he make more money his way, he got to do what he wanted to with his money, such as buying the Mavericks.

Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#67

Post by eastWestMath »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #54
kabdib wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophy is great stuff, I've read my share. I've also got a few linear foot of questionable material on my bookshelf. The Carlos Castenada stuff is clearly bullshit and mostly there just as a cautionary tale. I can't make up my mind about Heidegger because I just don't understand his writing . . . he's either brilliant, or he's blowing smoke up the world's fundament; heck, maybe both. One of my cow-orkers took a b…

My computer engineering degree made us take courses in logic. DeMorgans law was definitely a part of that. It's also randomly useful in every day life to remember, "a implies b doesn't imply b implies a" and stuff like that. Lol people should hear some of the debates me and my engineering friends have sometimes. It's interjected with all of this stuff.

My undergrad math department had a class on mathematical logic (set theory, Peano arithmetic) that was required to take higher level math classes. Wrote down some basic statements (conjunction, modus ponens, etc) and said if this didn’t seem fairly obvious you should reconsider your math major.

Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#68

Post by function_seven »

majos wrote: post #15

His argument seems to be that advances in AI will mean that software development itself is soon automated away, in which case a CS degree will be useless. Then, he advocates studying philosophy because this future will need "big picture" thinkers. I don't know how much substance there is to discuss here. It pretty much hinges on how you think AI will develop over the coming decades. I am skeptical that software devel…

The custodian example is a good one to look at. We tend to think of the automation as a sort of Rosie the Robot coming in and doing all the things the custodian once did. That's probably not the way the janitor's job gets automated, though. Think of self-cleaning toilets and sinks, industrial Roombas mopping and vacuuming the halls, glass-cleaning robots moving from window to window, and a trash-collecting robot emptying the bins.

There's still the edge cases of course. Clogged toilets or adhesive gunk on the windows for example. But where a janitorial crew was required before, now just one janitor handles those while all the routine cleaning is automated by specialized tools.

Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#69

Post by mistermann »

freedomben wrote: post #22
majos wrote: post #15

His argument seems to be that advances in AI will mean that software development itself is soon automated away, in which case a CS degree will be useless. Then, he advocates studying philosophy because this future will need "big picture" thinkers. I don't know how much substance there is to discuss here. It pretty much hinges on how you think AI will develop over the coming decades. I am skeptical that software devel…

> from what I can tell its main selling point is that it teaches you to examine things in a critical way that's very aware of the argument in question, the assumptions made, and the structure the argument sits in. That's definitely a big (and important) part of it. There's an unfortunate dearth of critical thinking and examination of ideas these days. I have theories as to why that is, but it's out of scope for this…

> There's an unfortunate dearth of critical thinking and examination of ideas these days. I have theories as to why that is, but it's out of scope for this discussion so I will abstain.

As someone who sees the same things but has no theories, I for one would like to hear a few of yours.

Re: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science

#70

Post by adventured »

plorkyeran wrote: post #31
bdcravens wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuban's stake in Broadcast.com's was worth about $100M before they sold to Yahoo, and since the sale to Yahoo, he's managed to over double his net worth via the Mavericks and his business interests. He may not be Gates, but I think he's more than a lottery winner.

Doubling your money over 18 years is a only 4% rate of return. Not terrible, but also not impressive.

His compound rate of wealth increase, post paying taxes on the sale, is around ~7.5%. That beats the S&P 500 over that time, which very few professional money managers can do.

$1.1 billion to $4.08 billion [1].

His primary business holding, the Dallas Mavericks, has increased in value from $285 million to $1.9 billion [2] (per the latest Forbes estimate). For that investment, he has seen a rate of value increase of about 11% per year. That investment stomps the S&P 500 massively (which was at ~1400 when the acquisition closed).

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/mark-cuban/

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2018/02/07/nba-...

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