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A Few Rules

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Re: A Few Rules

#61

Post by PeterisP »

rockostrich wrote: post #57
Swizec wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck where do you live? $140k gets you a beat up garage everywhere I’ve ever checked. The 2.25 advice is interesting. By that logic me and my girl can afford $750k which juuuust about starts to get you in the starter fixerupper homes here in SF. But we can’t afford the downpayment. And to make it worth buying, we’d have to stay there for 10+ years and then suddenly a starter 1.5bedroom becomes a little small…

The 2.25 thing seems like it's very conservative. The general advice is that the most you should spend on rent in a given year is 30% of your salary, but let's bring it down to 20% to be conservative. Let's say we get a shitty mortgage rate of 4% over 30 years. Assuming your income won't change at all over the course of the 30 year mortgage and spending the equivalent of 30% of your salary per year, you end up spendi…

I believe that the 2.25x estimate comes from a time where a mortgage rate of 4% would not be considered shitty but rather impossibly low. Lower interest rates have increased the home value that people can afford for the same monthly payment, and thus has been also a factor in driving up home prices.

Re: A Few Rules

#62

Post by AnimalMuppet »

"Something can be factually true but contextually nonsense."

This strikes me as the problem with most "news" organizations these days: They give facts about something that happened, but they place it in the context of their (the news organization's) narrative. This is true both of Fox and of CNN. And so they tell true things, but they don't tell the truth. Instead, they use true things to tell their story.

Re: A Few Rules

#63

Post by dredmorbius »

terr-dav wrote: post #54
dredmorbius wrote: post #46

The full context of the Wilson Newton/Darwin quote, from an obscure lecture (Worldcat has no record), is this: The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the s…

Thanks for the context. In response to Wilson, I’d argue that Marx’s work provides a better analytical framework for understanding government than Darwin though. (;

Marx is closer to Darwin (evolutionary system) than Newton (mechanistic) in this context.

Marx is also responding to social Darwinism, notably Malthus and Spencer. For the latter, the insistance that all behaviour and selection occurs at the level of the individual rather than larger aggregates (family, community, tribe, population). Which is widely seen now as a very incomplete model. Though it's similarly possible to go wrong in invalid group-assimilation theory as with tribalism and nationalism's more sinister variants.

What specifically do you draw from Marx?

Re: A Few Rules

#64

Post by dredmorbius »

gonzo41 wrote: post #13
skmurphy wrote: post #6

My top four: Behavior is hard to fix. People say they’ve learned but they underestimate how much of their previous mistake was caused by emotions that will return when faced with the same circumstances. Being good at something doesn’t promise rewards. It doesn’t even promise a compliment. What’s rewarded in the world is scarcity, so what matters is what you can do that other people are bad at. People learn when they’…

Worth thinking about with that rule on scarcity. It can also be about what you'll do that others will balk at. Plumbers being a great example of this.

Adam Smith identified five factors, which seem durable:

The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others. First, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...

Re: A Few Rules

#65

Post by watwut »

cobbzilla wrote: post #31
watwut wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil rights movement was started by Rosa Park sitting on the bus. It was surprising big event. Most characters in that story kept going by same scripts as before, with only slight variations and only little bit of learning from previous experiences.

Claudette Colvin [1] did “the bus refusal” nine months earlier. Alas Claudette was not a sympathetic public figure (she had an affair with a married white man), so the NAACP engineered a re-enactment with Rosa. I think what Colvin did took much more bravery. And in providing inspiration for Parks’s actions, she’s an under-appreciated hero of the civil rights movement. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvi…

I mean, Colvin did not had to pay price Parks paid. And Parks knew what it will cost.

And no Parks sit in was not engineered by NAACP. It was her own decision at the moment. It would be pretty hard to stage that situation. It even seem she had legal right to stay sit, the driver did not had to press for charges and the bus did not had to be full...

Besides, the massive protests after surprised everyone including Parks. And someone else staying too just proves that people were repeating patterns.

People were troubling busses more often to.

Re: A Few Rules

#66

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

Swizec wrote: post #60
rockostrich wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2.25 thing seems like it's very conservative. The general advice is that the most you should spend on rent in a given year is 30% of your salary, but let's bring it down to 20% to be conservative. Let's say we get a shitty mortgage rate of 4% over 30 years. Assuming your income won't change at all over the course of the 30 year mortgage and spending the equivalent of 30% of your salary per year, you end up spendi…

Sure and all of this is moot if you can’t afford a down payment. The down payment and closing costs on a 1.5mil home are massive Paying the mortgage itself isn’t the problem. We already pay the landlord’s mortgage.

5% downpayment for $140k home is $7k.

This is one quarter of an average wedding expenditure in the US [1]

[1] https://www.weddingstats.org/average-cost-of-a-wedding/

Re: A Few Rules

#67

Post by Swizec »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #66
Swizec wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure and all of this is moot if you can’t afford a down payment. The down payment and closing costs on a 1.5mil home are massive Paying the mortgage itself isn’t the problem. We already pay the landlord’s mortgage.

5% downpayment for $140k home is $7k. This is one quarter of an average wedding expenditure in the US [1] [1] https://www.weddingstats.org/average-cost-of-a-wedding/

Yes but $140k homes are not available where I want to live.

Re: A Few Rules

#68

Post by mcamac »

kubanczyk wrote: post #43

> People learn when they’re surprised. I took it as a quick opportunity to stop reading, since I wasn't surprised at any point. But now I'm thinking: in the morning I found out that "la hoja" is "the sheet [of paper, etc]" in Spanish. How do I still know it in the afternoon if my jaw didn't meet the floor at any point?

Re. "la hoja" - try auto spaced repetition. Embrace the fact that these are pretty mundane realizations! Something like jointoucan.com, which repeatedly generates these moments (no affiliation, just a happy user).

Re: A Few Rules

#69

Post by watwut »

dredmorbius wrote: post #48
watwut wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil rights movement was started by Rosa Park sitting on the bus. It was surprising big event. Most characters in that story kept going by same scripts as before, with only slight variations and only little bit of learning from previous experiences.

This better fits the "compelling narrative" rather than "surprising events" mode. Perhaps combining them. The right story, told the right way, at the right time.

Who was not surprised by bus boycott happening? Because i read about that lately and Parks herself was long term frustrated by passivity of general public. Yes she was activist, but one of few and precisely her experience of activism make her not expect anything big happening.

She experienced failure after failure, hoping merely for next generation to achieve something.

Re: A Few Rules

#70

Post by rovolo »

jolmg wrote: post #55
kubanczyk wrote: post #43

> People learn when they’re surprised. I took it as a quick opportunity to stop reading, since I wasn't surprised at any point. But now I'm thinking: in the morning I found out that "la hoja" is "the sheet [of paper, etc]" in Spanish. How do I still know it in the afternoon if my jaw didn't meet the floor at any point?

> How do I still know it in the afternoon if my jaw didn't meet the floor at any point? It doesn't say people only learn when they're surprised.

> [People don't learn] when they read the right answer, or are told they’re doing it wrong
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