Recently had a strange decision circumstance, I had to choose if I would go for a weekend course or not. There were reasons for why I would really go, but also wariness that it could go wrong and I would be stuck there. It was not the classical choosing among endless alternatives case, but as a maximizer the emotional state was very similar. The same creeping uneasiness, the relentless scanning...
from google define: "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
In my opinion "regulation by the community" is what is important, eg. there are private coops. This regulation is consensus-driven by the workers and people involved, direct action, locality etc.., it's not bad at all, on the contrary you feel more connected.
Although gene-expression and socio-evolution might have a bigger role in selection than the genes itself.
Love your zen but do you socialize besides customers? If not is it a trait of yours or you just choose it as the needs of your startup?
This message is more like to anyone with attachment issues, I've just read your brother is 13 years old so mehh, don't know.. Safe bet that he is not mature enough, haven't read anything about what are the hazards when adolescents take it.
With either yes or no, if you can afford you might consider taking off 1 or 2 years, moving to a cheap country and erudite yourself(online courses, books - but hell no to college) or just exploring stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU
good luck!
As robots become more and more general-intelligent with cheap maintenance costs, creating their specific "inner robot market", they will drive the costs of many human labour/service forms even lower making many current human-oriented job obsolete.
Without egalitarian welfare solutions, such as basic income, we are very much fucked.
I think part of your question is rooted in this false assumption and therefore not answarable. Life is chaotic and the biggest effects will come from rare, lucky, unforeseeable, "unkown unknown" type coincidences. These are positive/negative Black Swans in Taleb's terminology. Eg. a life-long-friend from a conference, your future wife in a party etc..
What you can do is maximize your surface to these positive Black Swans(eg. hoarding options, meet peoples) and minimize possible negative outcomes(leverage contracts, debts, anything that tides you down).
Reinterpreting your question these types of heuristics/practices are what worth doing, but they are usually not specific decisions.
Books listing similar heuristics are Reed's Suceeding, Munger's Almanach and of course Taleb's Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan. Wonderful books, hope it helps.
Taleb also uses this method.
1. If you have money, consider going for a year to some cheap/sunny place and do exactly nothing. Take notes of that nothing. I've spent 9months doing that(although I stayed at home) and it was one of the most productive periods, in terms of self-discovery/reading/ideas. The downside can be absence of social connections but if you are the type you can love it. Another one that it somewhat involves your comfort zone, so you will learn a lot but a motivating team can be more effective(and harder/luckier to find).
2. PhD or any job is not a life-long decision. Go there, see it and if you don't like it move on. I've started a PhD at the moment and for me it's good as the scholarship is okay and I literally do whatever I want..
3. Getting into a phd can be much easier than what you think, you just have to write a myriad applications(~20) chances you can get something you like. Once you are in its usually pretty much up to you how you spend your time etc..
Cheers, M
With fat tails anything can happen, partly because luck, most of the explanations are just hindsight bias.
It's not that you don't like to code, you just enjoy to be connected and entertained by more stuff.
Of course a great counter example is John Carmack - in there I think he is far more interested in the exact technical details than your average entrepreneur - btw he was never an entrepreneur, he is a "pure" engineer with obsession to optimize(and many other sides of course).