ankeshk

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Christopher Columbus reached the Americas in 1492. He traded colourful beads and small mirrors. In return he got gold. Both the indigenous people and the Spaniards thought of each other as fools.

Value does not arise out of usage or cash flow or how something is classified or even its history. Value arises out of perception. Its all a narrative. It always has been.

People thinking crypto is useless is a narrative. People thinking money will always lose value due to inflation is a narrative. Both are true based on your point of perception.

Can it help with technical analysis as well? And screening of stocks based on technicals?

There are 3 narratives required. As the late great copywriter Gary Halbert taught: star, story, and solution.

Who are you. Why do you do what you do. How are you different.

Answer these 3 narratives and bonding with clients becomes easier.

You've got to do less but do better. Thinking that you need to do more is the culprit.

Marie Kondo teaches how to declutter your home by using joy as measurement. You've got to do the same thing to declutter first. Make a list of everything you do. And then measure them on 3 points:

1. Does it give you joy?

2. Does it earn you compliments?

3. Does it captivate you and keep you interested?

If the answer is no for any of the 3 questions, cut it out. (Question 2 should only be used for money making activities.)

Why did Japan not have the same inflation even after printing more than anyone for a lot more years?

There is a point to gossip (which is what most news is.) Gossip connects people. Helps with bonding. When two music lovers meet, they don't each talk about their fav musician. Because that would quickly make the conversation competitive. So instead, they talk about the most famous current musician.

Don't disconnect yourself so much that it makes interaction with others difficult. Find one or two good sources of headlines. And don't go deeper than the headlines or the first paragraph. 2 minutes a day is enough news.

Thanks for continuing the discourse.

I think it's very easy to make assumptions and it's good to have heuristics to make life easier. But it's not wise to double down on them.

(You're half wrong again. I dont think stoicism that Ryan Holiday talks about is the greatest philosophy. I have read a couple of his books but dont subscribe to him. Anyways I would love to buy you a copy of his work if you want to read and judge for yourself.)

Thanks for being confidently incorrect.

I've not played Factorio but love your argument. Very thought provoking.

What happens if something in the middle breaks and you don't have a buffer? What happens if there is no iron shortage but the steel furnace blows up? Aren't buffers important in such situations?

How I raised myself from failure to success in selling - Frank Bettger. It's a classic.

I think sales can be broken down into:

1. Foundation of being perceived as an authority

2. Lead generation

3. Persuasion and conversion

4. Re-sale

Breaking it down makes it easy to become better at the sales process.

Strategy + story telling == https://zenstrategies.com

This hits me with nostalgia. I had made the first buy me a beer / coffee plugin for the wordpress ecosystem back in 2007. People consistently were earning more from donations than from adsense through the plugin.

The idea wasn't originally mine. Paul Myers on the warriorforum used to have "buy me a beer" in his signature. I just ported it to wordpress. Its amazing to see you guys doing well.

"Happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue." - Victor Frankl

Response to having a space program while having poverty: http://balajiviswanathan.quora.com/Indian-Space-Mission-Pove...

Please scroll down a bit because the awesome part comes after the subhead: Why India needs a MARS program.

India > USA > Back to India for me.

While I agree with the thesis, a contradictory point comes to mind.

We just don't know a lot about how cognitive resources are utilized. Long distance runners know this. Athletes know this. The whole concept of "second wind". Where they find the strength to better their game using way less resources -- after they have been tired. Some type of cognitive resource depletion gives people even more energy and motivation.

While I agree that things should be made simpler and we shouldn't over-gamify things, I don't think we should make decisions with the cake / fruits question in mind. That just provides a framework to dumb things down. We will never enable the users to hit their second wind if they never get tasks that make them crave cakes.

I guess my point is: simplicity is good. Simplicity to the point of dumbness is not.

Make it blink or jiggle a bit. Problem of winning attention solved.

Don't start with an idea. Start with a problem. Call a friend and ask him what problems he face. See if you think you can solve any of them. If not, call another friend. Don't create a product and then try and sell it. Find demand first.

Your thought is correct: factory made diamonds will just create a new diamond category. We have seen this before in the pearl industry with the advent of "cultural" pearls. Cultural pearls have not reduced the prices of natural pearls one bit.

Being a minimalist myself, I know where you come from. Buying something expensive just to show others that you can buy something expensive seems like a ridiculous idea to me.

But a big part of the world give a lot of importance to status and social standing. This is precisely the notion that has made money for companies like Rolex. And the haute couture fashion industry.

DeBeers today controls 35% of the diamonds. They are not big enough any more to control and manipulate diamond prices - as they used to before. Diamond prices are still high, and rising because of the demand.

The demand in countries like India and China is rising. Diamonds and jewelry is the modern dowry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry

Its inherent value is that it shows people that the family is well to do.

Things may change with the advent of artificial factory made diamonds (already showing up, but not in big quantities). But it won't ruin the diamond prices, just create two diamond categories. It should follow the trends that the pearl industry followed after the advent of cultural pearls.

Source: my Dad is a diamond trader.

Blockchain.info has this chart that tracks the number of bitcoins traded on known exchanges vs the number of bitcoins exchanged in all other transactions.

This chart gives a somewhat measure of if the hoarding has gone up or not. It gives us a good idea about bitcoin speculation.

http://blockchain.info/charts/tx-trade-ratio

The lower the number on this chart, the less the speculation. Recently, the number has almost always been under 20. This number was at 225 during the July 2011 bitcoin bubble.

(More explanation about this chart: http://codinginmysleep.com/measuring-bitcoin-speculation/)

So while we would think that more people would be hoarding bitcoins, the data shows thats not necessarily true.

Combining this chart with the number of bitcoin transactions per day chart gives us a good indication that the price is increasing because more people are hearing about bitcoins and using it. (Number of transactions per day have gone up from 6,000 a year ago to 70,000 today.)

India is cheaper but not 14 times cheaper. $1000 doesn't go far in urban India. Its 2 weeks salary for awesome developers in India. One to one and a half months salary for ok to good developers.