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How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Think for Yourself

#861

Post by Turing_Machine »

yellowapple wrote: post #842
Turing_Machine wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same with the water consumed by those crops. Every drop of water on Earth has been "consumed" many, many times over. It doesn't just get used once and then disappear. There may be localized shortages of water (e.g., in California), but that doesn't mean that the Earth's water overall gets "used up", in any meaningful sense.

That ain't what I'm saying. Every inch of land on Earth has been "reused" many times over, too. That doesn't change the fact that there's a finite amount of it, and the possession of any quantity of it is at the expense of everyone else needing it. Same goes for water; yes, the water itself doesn't magically disappear, but of the 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers of water on this planet, if you're storing a trillion of…

>If you're storing a trillion of those km³ for yourself in water tanks

All the water tanks in the world don't add up to a trillion km³. Not by many orders of magnitude.

> the resulting labor and energy costs of converting the latter back into the former

The sun does that for free, and has done for billions of years.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#862

Post by lamp_book »

tdevito wrote: post #849
fakedang wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, honestly the only YC startup they seem to be romanticizing is Airbnb. I've only heard of a few casual mentions (from Michael Siebel I think) of Brex or Segment or any of the other startups.

It does appear that YC is no longer relevant the way they were 10 years ago.

Is there a "new" YC?

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#863

Post by yellowapple »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #861
yellowapple wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ain't what I'm saying. Every inch of land on Earth has been "reused" many times over, too. That doesn't change the fact that there's a finite amount of it, and the possession of any quantity of it is at the expense of everyone else needing it. Same goes for water; yes, the water itself doesn't magically disappear, but of the 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers of water on this planet, if you're storing a trillion of…

>If you're storing a trillion of those km³ for yourself in water tanks All the water tanks in the world don't add up to a trillion km³. Not by many orders of magnitude. > the resulting labor and energy costs of converting the latter back into the former The sun does that for free, and has done for billions of years.

> All the water tanks in the world don't add up to a trillion km³. Not by many orders of magnitude.

You're missing my point: that hoarding water is at the expense of anyone else who needs water. One milliliter, one gigaliter, doesn't matter; that's still less for everyone else unless and until it is released, and during that time the mere storage of that water externalizes an opportunity cost on everyone else needing that water.

> The sun does that for free, and has done for billions of years.

Right, because the sun magically drops all precipitation into lakes and rivers, and not a drop of it into the oceans. I'm sure the sun has some sort of tracking system that realizes which molecules of water come from where and puts them right back whence they came, right?

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#864

Post by piva00 »

nickpp wrote: post #269
moralsupply wrote: post #263

To get negative votes in Hacker News: * Post something that is factual, but the crowd doesn't like * Post something that is logical, but the crowd doesn't like * Post a link to something reasonable, but that the crowd doesn't like Just to say that Hacker News is a highly biased community. There's very little space here to discuss anything that is not "conventional" beyond some bits of technology. When a topic touches…

Not only negative votes, but flagging as well. The flagging mechanism is commonly used on HN to completely disappear dissenting opinions.

No, the flagging works well for unsupported opinions (usually with quite bad discourse included) being pushed, if you feel you were flagged wrongly you can always go check with the mod team and explain why you believe your behaviour shouldn't have been flagged.

I believe that HN is one of the most open forums for dissenting opinions when those opinions are well-presented and substantiated.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#865

Post by glitchc »

psysharp wrote: post #210
glitchc wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is rearranging existing chords into a new sequence "Invention" or "Discovery"?

If you reference it to the world and its inherent chaos it is an invention. If you reference it to a structure with labels and a finite number of alterations it is a discovery of a part of that structure

Evolution is inherently chaotic, yet new species are "discovered," not "invented." Coming back to songs, most chart hits are cobbled together from samples and prior works. It's unclear whether we can all these new creations that occurred in isolation.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#866

Post by eloff »

darkerside wrote: post #858
eloff wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On math, I would argue those are all equivalent and equally right. On politics different positions are rarely equivalent, but you're right that there's almost always truth on both sides and it's really expressing differing views of priorities and values. However, if you rank them by "which is best for human well-being" there is a best answer even if we can't know it. So one can't use this as a easy out "all opinions…

> However, if you rank them by "which is best for human well-being" there is a best answer even if we can't know it. Years of philosophical thinking begs to differ. https://owlcation.com/humanities/Different-Types-of-Modern-U... On those latter points, I'd go back to much of the disagreement being how much it matters. On balance, I agree with taking preventative actions because of the risk of global catastrophe. But…

I think long term there's a chance global warming is just what the Earth needs. We have a pattern of ice ages, and if you think global warming is bad imagine an ice age. We grow most of our food at latitudes in the northern hemisphere that would no longer have a long enough growing season. We might one day find ourselves in a position of having to burn coal or release methane on purpose to ward off an ice age.

However, there's no question it's going to be horrific to adapt to meanwhile. There's also a question of how much warming do we need to prevent an ice age, because ideally we'd want to stop there. Nobody asks these questions seriously though, and it could likely end ones career as a scientist to talk about it.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#867

Post by nevertoolate »

ardit33 wrote: post #629
ryeguy_24 wrote: post #615

Am I the only one is getting pretty bored of "formula for success" content? This essay and other's like it, without evidence or data, implies that some of us know the formula for success. I get it, the things that change convention are unconventional at first. This is the definition of unconventional. I agree with the general vector of his essay but this is just boring to me. Here is my formula for success (in case a…

I don't know, but I rather hear sporting/fitness advice from someone that won NBA finals, or the soccer World Cup, then just some random loser. The winner at least can tell you how they did succeed personally, even if they have no comprehensive studies with data. On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all. You might be broke and posting from your mom's base…

Good luck

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#868

Post by tclancy »

tambourine_man wrote: post #714
tclancy wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a compelling point. Tell me more.

If you really think for yourself you won’t follow whatever the article's advice is. However well intentioned the original proposal is, it’s not yours and not to be followed if the intention is to be original. The article’s proposal is an impossible task, akin to the barber paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-the-joke

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#869

Post by Turing_Machine »

yellowapple wrote: post #863
Turing_Machine wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're storing a trillion of those km³ for yourself in water tanks All the water tanks in the world don't add up to a trillion km³. Not by many orders of magnitude. > the resulting labor and energy costs of converting the latter back into the former The sun does that for free, and has done for billions of years.

> All the water tanks in the world don't add up to a trillion km³. Not by many orders of magnitude. You're missing my point: that hoarding water is at the expense of anyone else who needs water. One milliliter, one gigaliter, doesn't matter; that's still less for everyone else unless and until it is released, and during that time the mere storage of that water externalizes an opportunity cost on everyone else needing…

> You're missing my point: that hoarding water is at the expense of anyone else who needs water.

Someone with a water tank in (say) Seattle, Washington is not "hoarding water" "at the expense" of someone in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, because there is no practical way of getting the "hoarded" water from Washington State to Ethiopia. If the Seattleite doesn't "hoard" that water, it's going to run straight into Puget Sound. It's not going to somehow appear at a tap in Addis Ababa.

> Right, because the sun magically drops all precipitation into lakes and rivers, and not a drop of it into the oceans.

Now you're just strawmanning. Of course a lot of it falls on the oceans. But enough of it falls on land that the hydrologic cycle continues, as it has for billions of years.

I think fundamentally you're just wedded to the the idea that water gets "used up" in the same sense that, say, oil, gets used up.

It doesn't.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#870

Post by pgayed »

jolux wrote: post #708
pgayed wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they are under-resourced or poorly connected This is soluble.

Often not by the people in that situation but as a society yes it absolutely should be soluble.

Then how did the first people in that situation do it?

Said differently, who invented the first bootstraps and how did they do it without bootstraps?

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