AElsinore77

I'm the above poster's cofounder that pitched this in person with YC on April 30, 2018 - exact same name and idea. I'm definitely curious if this is just innocent coincidence.

First thing I thought of too - the only category where students ranked themselves as less proficient than they were perceived to be is technology - the one area they are probably actually proficient in.

This is quite interesting -- tangentially related, is anyone aware of studies of the long term effects of sports which include blood chokes (constricting carotids)? These might include Judo, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, as well as modern MMA and submission grappling. In these cases, there may be plenty of oxygen in the blood, but the blood flow to the brain is being restricted causing loss of consciousness.

Manufacturing is a big one -- right now most factories are still run very manually, but advances in robotics, computer vision, and AI will change the game. In terms of companies here in the bay area working on this, theres Andrew's own Landing.ai as well as Instrumental (https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2017/06/22/instrume...).

A great read! A sharp commentary on conflating our models of reality with reality itself. So many of our current debates are simply dialogues over which model of the world is most accurate, but we have a tendency to identify our ego with our pet models, which can lead to righteous certainty that we are right and our model is in fact reality itself -- which brings all conversations to an impasse. Reminds me of this quote I read in another HN post recently: "Stanford business school’s motto is “change lives, change organizations, change the world” — though they rarely seem to know what or how. Or what the role of chance and circumstance is. But if the goal is to change something, they must have the ability to determine the future, mustn’t they?" (source: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/11/western-elite-chi...)

What strikes me most about philosophy is in how core it is to everything we do — and this is something I didn’t realize for the longest time. The foundations of the economic, social, and political systems we live in are based upon philosophy; on theories of the nature of man laid down by thinkers such as Rousseau, Kant, and Smith. It turns out that “self evident truths” might actually be philosophical assertions. Philosophy is the first principle upon which many ideas we may initially take for granted rest upon, and I wonder if a general lack of explicit attention and examination on the subject is partially what enables some of the "post truth" attitudes we are seeing today. The more I learn, the more I can relate to "all I know is I know nothing."

An interesting angle on studying personality is through the lens of research on psychoactive substances. A study on magic mushrooms several years ago found that "just one strong dose of hallucinogenic mushrooms can alter a person's personality for more than a year and perhaps permanently." Previously, it was posited that: "personality rarely changes much after the age of 25 or 30..... This is one of the first studies to show that you actually can change adult personality.."

This raises the follow up question: what is changing? Is there a fundamentally different reaction to the same situation, or is there instead a different interpretation of the situation which is what is leading to a different reaction?

Cognitive behavioral therapy, the "most widely used evidence-based practice for improving mental health," provides evidence that the latter is absolutely a possible answer. "CBT is a psychotherapy that is based on the cognitive model: the way that individuals perceive a situation is more closely connected to their reaction than the situation itself."

Based on this, it seems very possible at least one way people can "choose" to change their personality (as defined by their reactions (feelings, thoughts, and actions) to situations) is to seek to find ways to change the way they percieve the world.

Sources: https://www.livescience.com/16287-mushrooms-alter-personalit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy https://beckinstitute.org/get-informed/what-is-cognitive-the...

Bumping due to relevance to: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609408/quantum-computers-...

Is Bitcoin “legit?” Does it have any purpose or value? I think it does, and here are several lenses through which to see cryptocurrencies, that explain why:

As an investment: The world is already comfortable with “hot potato” investments that derive their value from the fact someone else will buy it later (ie non-dividend, non-voting stock). As long as a critical mass of investors continues to see it as legitimate, it will be.

As a way to avoid hyperinflation: Central banks can print money seemingly arbitrarily, diluting buying power. Cryptocurrencies present an alternative, where growth of money supply is constrained by known and predictable rules. What is inflation in the US, really? Is the stock market going up because real world wealth is increasing, or is it just printed money flooding into assets classes instead of “basket of goods” used to measure inflation?

As an alternative currency not tied to any particular central bank: The value of a currency is ultimately derived from the real-world value controlled by the individuals who believe in and use that currency. Most currencies have their basis in communities defined by countries and borders — with cryptocurrency, you introduce a new community, where the value of it is ultimately derived from the real-world value controlled by all the individuals who are willing to conduct business in that cryptocurrency.

As a check against authority in future with no cash: In a cashless future, there is great potential for abuse of power if all transactions must go through a central authority: 100% visibility and power to interfere with all private transactions of the population. Do you want to give someone power to see every little transaction you make, with power to stop it if they don’t like what you are doing? In this cashless future, trust-less peer to peer digital currency is essential.

As a way to diversify away from assets based in your own country’s currency: cryptocurrencies offer a relatively accessible and easy way to diversify away from holding all your wealth in one currency. To hold a certain currency is to bet in that country relative to world. For America, there’s a bet on how the USD will track against other currencies in decades to come. Is china gonna unpeg the yuan further and further and make a gun for the number 1 spot? Has America invested in the infrastructure, education, large scale coordination, and energy capabilities to stay on top not just in terms of dollars on paper, but real world value that underlies real wealth? Crypto is just one way to place a bet based on a thesis around this.

All this is based on the fundamental question: what is money? Money can essentially be seen as a “share” of the entirety of the worlds resources. These “shares” give you authority to allocate resources, such as food, materials, and other people. We all need a base level of “shares” to allocate the food and shelter we need to survive. Most big businesses use their “shares” to pursue one thing: getting more “shares”. And, your “share’s” constantly get diluted. No matter how many shares exist, in the end they only act as a distribution mechanism for the actual resources that exist. In this light, crypto is just as real as anything else; its just another made-up concept we use to coordinate society, just like traditional money.

What worries me most about cryptocurrency right now, is the underlying cryptography, and how long that will last. Will there be fork to new method in time?

If you encounter a problem with agencies collecting on illegitimate debt, it may be reported to the credit bureaus, which can be a big deal for you (buying home, etc).

The bureaus wont help you; I went through an 18-month ordeal figuring out how to clear these things, and heres what I suggest:

-get up to speed on FDCPA rights -officially dispute the collection -pursue the original debtor, and get a resolution in writing. sue them in small claims to get a judgement in your favor if you need to. -send a copy of the resolution to the debt collector and the credit bureau dispute centers

Hope this helps in case anyone is dealing with this kind of stuff.

Check out this: https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucina...

Neural nets are doing something that the mind does too - it takes visual input, then it "predicts" and "fills in the blanks" (aka hallucinates) so that you "see" what you expect to see. Its why you dont notice your blind spot.

Its also interesting to note that this process appears to change as we age: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474569125/your-brain-on-lsd-l...

There's a lot of discussion here about "virtue" and "self-discipline" - I'd like to offer an interesting possibility that "discipline" is not about motivation or willpower, but is actually an intellectual exercise of avoiding motivated reasoning in the mind.

The simplest example: I resolve to wake up in the morning to run before work. However, when I wake, I feel exhausted. "You need more rest; you can always make it up tomorrow," I might think to myself. If I accept this as a reason to stay in bed, I am falling to motivated reasoning; I am believing as fact an excuse made by my mind looking for a way out of discomfort. I can rest easy when I believe my excuse. I can rest easy when I can say "I have plenty of discipline, I just needed to rest today."

Exercise is merely one of many ways to illuminate your logical fallacies to yourself. The fallacy of motivated reasoning is what causes alternative facts - the mind can always come up with a reason to avoid the discomfort of getting out of bed, just like it can come up with reasons to avoid the discomfort of saying "I was wrong."

Another key trend to consider - China's labor costs are growing up to 2x per year: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/welcoming-our-...

China's push for AI is a recognition that the loss of one advantage (cheap human labor) could be replaced by another (cheap machine labor).

This is a very interesting point. One distinction I'm getting hung up on is that this dilution is in the form of a different currency (Ethereum classic, Bitcoin Cash), not in Bitcoin itself. So the "dilution/inflation" effect comes in the form of competing currencies. In these events, do you have a sense of what mechanisms might affect whether the new currencies gain traction?

Think of it as a high-risk hedge against future hyperinflation - the Fed can expand the monetary supply arbitrarily to infinity; but Bitcoin's expansion is limited by design.

I think of money as simply a distribution mechanism for the world's resources - a unit of currency can be thought of like a share; a right to allocate a portion of resources represented by that share. With the dollar, you can be diluted to infinity, with bitcoin, you cannot. With any fiat, it only has value because everyone else says it does. ETH is interesting because it is more than just currency, but it remains to be seen how valuable the ability to run decentralized apps will become.

If you are unable to observe a thing directly, and instead could only see it through a distortion lens, would you want the opportunity to look at it through multiple different distortion lenses instead of just one?

The world we know is largely constructed by semi-conscious and sub-conscious processes, from world building processes (such as how the mind filters and modifies information to construct our reality), to conclusions we make about the world, ourselves, and what is possible (emotionally motivated reasoning, decision heuristics, predictive modeling).

Google deep dream provides interesting insight into psychedelic phenomena, and hints at what is changing in the mind’s world-building process when on those substances.

When it comes to MDMA, because it so dramatically changes emotion, it can also dramatically shift reasoning and thinking heuristics that unconsciously originate from emotion. This can transform beliefs that you once took for self-evident fact, into things that you now realize represent how you feel more than reality.

Some further reading that I found very valuable: World Building Process: https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucina... Deep Dream: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/07/goo...

In my experience, exercise was helpful, but mostly only after I realized what I could learn about myself from it. Primarily, it allowed me to better understand and manage 2 types of “automatic” thought processes that I have constantly: (1) Intrusive Thoughts - unpleasant thoughts that pop into my head (2) Motivated Reasoning - mind trying to draw logical but untrue conclusions in line with my current feelings at the time

As an example of how the 2 may combine in normal life, an internal dialogue might look like this: (1) Intrusive thought: “I can’t accomplish this goal” (2) Motivated reasoning: “Because I’m a failure and I’m worthless” The most insidious thing is that these motivated conclusions feel so right, feel so self evident.

With exercise, similar thought processes will arise. The difference is, because you are dealing with a simple physical task, there is the possibility of immediate physical evidence to demonstrate to yourself your intrusive thought, and the reasoning for it, are simply wrong.

The analogous thought processes during exercise might look like this: (1) Intrusive thought: “I can’t finish this workout” (2) Motivated reasoning: “Because I’m not in good enough shape and it hurts too much, I can’t take it, I need to stop” There is a point where I feel like I want to stop, and at first it seems so reasonable to stop, to not overwork myself and hurt myself. But if I push on past that point, there is a realization “Huh - I’m still here, I’m still doing this, I thought I didn’t have it in me, but irrefutably I did because I am here still doing this after I thought I was done.”

I always thought I was naturally unathletic; I was never good at sports and hated exercise until I became an adult. Looking back now, I realized the only reason I was unathletic was because I believed I was, and my power of belief made it a reality.

As I’ve grown older, the intrusive thoughts and motivated reasoning are still here, but where in the past they stopped me dead in my tracks, now I have learned to see them for what they are and not let them define me.

Everyone has different experiences, and I mean no disrespect to anyone who hasn’t found value in exercise; I believe there are many ways to learn these types of lessons; for me, it just happened to be exercise, but it could have been anything.