Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 101 posts

Re: Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?

#91

Post by Retric »

xlnt wrote: post #85
Retric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want a DH6... guilty of having immoral values. they ought to find better things fun, but instead are wasting their lives. There are no single accepted set of moral values so the term has no inherent meaning. Where some groups say your thoughts are a moral choice it's far more common to say it's your actions that are moral in nature. Of those groups that feel your thoughts are important most feel doing g…

just because people don't agree on what moral knowledge is true does not make the term meaningless. you go on to discuss what some existing opinions on the matter are, with no particular regard for which are true, just how common they are; that isn't a way to figure out what is true, and you haven't suggested a better view than the one i put forward. PS No one wants a DH0 reply. And they shouldn't be upvoted. PPS You…

just because people don't agree on what moral knowledge is true does not make the term meaningless

Words or phrases only have meaning when there is a shared understanding of what they mean. GLARPF people who JAVARA understand this SLFARL VERORLRA when they SFLLKKLSA. You can't agree to that statement because it has no meaning but at the same time you can't disagree with it. If you define love as the sky and then say "the sky is love" there is no meaning to those words. Basically defining terms is semantically identical to gibberish. IMO, this is why people gave up on philosophy as a science.

PS: I don’t disagree with your original statement because it lacked meaning.

Re: Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?

#92

Post by xlnt »

Retric wrote: post #91
xlnt wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just because people don't agree on what moral knowledge is true does not make the term meaningless. you go on to discuss what some existing opinions on the matter are, with no particular regard for which are true, just how common they are; that isn't a way to figure out what is true, and you haven't suggested a better view than the one i put forward. PS No one wants a DH0 reply. And they shouldn't be upvoted. PPS You…

just because people don't agree on what moral knowledge is true does not make the term meaningless Words or phrases only have meaning when there is a shared understanding of what they mean. GLARPF people who JAVARA understand this SLFARL VERORLRA when they SFLLKKLSA. You can't agree to that statement because it has no meaning but at the same time you can't disagree with it. If you define love as the sky and then say…

There is shared understanding of what 'morality' means. There is also disagreement. The same can be said of a wide variety of other words, such as 'christianity', 'freedom', or 'liberal'. None of these words are meaningless or useless in conversation despite the existence of some disagreement about their meanings.

Re: Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?

#94

Post by cmos »

1. Appreciate how lucky you are to be starting something from nothing.

2. The less cash you spend the longer you have to make your dream possible. Spend cash in the right places. Like health insurance.

3. Never interrupt a good salesperson in the middle of their pitch, even if they are saying something incorrect. Tell them afterwards, and if it's important enough they can always call the customer/investor and clear it up.

4. Read contracts. A lot of the time they don't make sense. Sentences go on forever. Don't take that crap. Make a lawyer spell things out and simplify. Make sure you read and understand every detail, particularly investment agreements. These people are not your friends. They are not your parents. They are not looking out for your best interests. Your lawyer isn't either. Lawyers are just making sure you are not going to get sued and such. They are not looking out for your best business interests. Do not think because a lawyer says a contract is 'pretty good' that the lawyer has evaluated the business implications of it.

5. Don't listen to accountants when they say the word 'profit'. It's an illusion. It doesn't necessarily mean you made money. You could in fact have ended the year or month with less cash (and assets) than you had at the beginning, which sound to me like an unprofitable year or month, but they will take numbers from an accrued loss and add them up to make profit. This kind of profit isn't going to help you pay rent or hit payroll. And savy investors can read through it. Cash is all that matters. So when a suit* say 'cash is king', which is often their 'advice', what they really mean is focus on the cash flow, not the balance sheet.

*a 'suit' is someone who has started a few companies and is quite successful, but doesn't remember the early nitty gritty days of suffering and fear, so they like to say things like 'cash is king' to summarize all their mistakes of running out of cash.

6. Figure out how to make and read a cash flow and balance sheet. It's like a doctors chart for a business. If you have no revenue, and you have 'project' revenue in your cash flow chart, make 2 more. One with no projected revenue, and one with 1/3 what you projected. This tells you how long your company will survive in the worst case and most likely case scenario. Chances are your actual revenue will be 1/2 to 1/3 of what you expect it to be (in the beginning, with no history or trends, and a brand new product in a new market) The more prepared you are for this the more likely chance you'll have of surviving.

And, if your 100% right, you have better problems to solve than running out of money. :)

Re: Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?

#95

Post by izak30 »

xlnt wrote: post #58
trekker7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upmodded you because I think you raise a valid argument. But I do disagree, because I don't think it's immoral for a highly skilled doctor to quit his profession and open up a comic book store to sell Pokemon cards instead. Yes, society will be worse off for it. But does society have a right to tell the former doctor what profession he should take up? Morals would dictate that people have a basic right to do what t…

I don't think he owes anything to society. I think he should do what's best for himself. If that's pokemon, so be it, but he'd be better off, and live a better life, if he cared more about thinking and learning and doing great things. Good ways of life reward the doer most of all.

This is completely contradictory to your original argument. Your original argument was 'if you can do "better" and you're not-> you are guilty of having immoral values' Completely neglecting the subjectivity of morality, this statement above says that he should do what is best for himself, even if that is pokemon or football (citing your examples only..nothing wrong with pokemon or football), and I think the only global definition of morality is what one 'should do' (with a different set of rules in each subset definition).

Re: Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?

#96

Post by xlnt »

izak30 wrote: post #95
xlnt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he owes anything to society. I think he should do what's best for himself. If that's pokemon, so be it, but he'd be better off, and live a better life, if he cared more about thinking and learning and doing great things. Good ways of life reward the doer most of all.

This is completely contradictory to your original argument. Your original argument was 'if you can do "better" and you're not-> you are guilty of having immoral values' Completely neglecting the subjectivity of morality, this statement above says that he should do what is best for himself, even if that is pokemon or football (citing your examples only..nothing wrong with pokemon or football), and I think the only glo…

i don't see how you can call my position contradictory just b/c you disagree that morality is objective. that's not an internal contradiction -- i consistently consider it objective.

Re: Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?

#98

Post by izak30 »

xlnt wrote: post #96
izak30 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely contradictory to your original argument. Your original argument was 'if you can do "better" and you're not-> you are guilty of having immoral values' Completely neglecting the subjectivity of morality, this statement above says that he should do what is best for himself, even if that is pokemon or football (citing your examples only..nothing wrong with pokemon or football), and I think the only glo…

i don't see how you can call my position contradictory just b/c you disagree that morality is objective. that's not an internal contradiction -- i consistently consider it objective.

'completely neglecting the subjectivity of morality' <--I did not disagree with you on this, I assumed your position.

Re: Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?

#100

Post by xlnt »

izak30 wrote: post #98
xlnt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't see how you can call my position contradictory just b/c you disagree that morality is objective. that's not an internal contradiction -- i consistently consider it objective.

'completely neglecting the subjectivity of morality' <--I did not disagree with you on this, I assumed your position.

what is the contradiction you are saying that my position contains?
Post reply on HN