leonvoss
>The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work.
>In practice you don't have to worry much about the third criterion. Ambitious people are if anything already too conservative about it. So all you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in.
Bull-shit. The set of all things you enjoy and have aptitude for is much larger than the set of things you can make money on. There's a reason why Paul Graham chased coding and making an e-store in the 90s and not becoming a great philosopher, which he seems to have natural interest in (and he probably thinks he has quite a bit of aptitude for it).
That reason is $$$. I've found in my time that the number one rule of making $$$ is that you must chase $$$. It doesn't knock at your door, it doesn't come when you least expect it. $$$ is degrading in that you must submit yourself to it. If the $$$ is in code then you code and there's no room for individuality beyond that. It's genuflect or be poor. That's why all these rich people narrowly chase code or similar cash cows. The number two and three rules is chase it a lot and chase it efficiently. If you chase something else a lot and efficiently you will still be poor.
Charitably maybe the concept of chasing $$$ is so ingrained in these people that it's not a conscious decision to them. That seems to be what he says anyway. You could call that greed and I think a lot of brilliant people don't have it to the same degree that most billionaires do so failing to acknowledge it even by accident leads to gatekeeping money.
Some wonderful countries here: North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China. Thankfully the US hasn't signed it and probably won't because it thinks itself too above international law.
Interestingly, Qatar signed it with [the reservation](https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mt...) that
>The State of Qatar does not consider itself bound by the provisions of Articles (16), (15), and (14) of the Convention, as they contradict the provisions of Islamic Sharia, national legislation, and the social and cultural values of the State of Qatar.
These provisions [being](https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/cybercrime/convention/text/co...) Article 14: Offences related to online child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation material, Article 15: Solicitation or grooming for the purpose of committing a sexual offence against a child, Article 16: Non-consensual dissemination of intimate images.
I am trying to figure out what this means, as I am aware the Prophet married a 9 year old, but Google assures me the minimum age of marriage in Qatar is 16 with parental approval, and it's rare, and I thought Islam required no images of really anything at all, much less females of any age who are to be in burqas when in public.
Okay but for your position to be tenable you have to then go to step 2, which is some parents are incompetent at doing this, and step 3, which is that, nevertheless, their children, who are randomized copies of them genetically, still somehow need and benefit from the filters that their parents can't or won't apply. Then you get to step 4, which is that all of the competent people must suffer so those children can get it from a heavy handed government solution. I don't see how you jointly accept all these steps; it means you want to have a tyranny of the incompetent over the competent. You must jointly assert that they are dumb while placing them up and over the not dumb. That's full on crab-bucket, dysgenics by force ideology.
I have argued exact claim before and from what I recall, Tao maybe contributed 1% to MRI improvements in the last 20 to 30 years. You are way over exaggerating the importance of what he did.
"But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little child.
"Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father; and what the child had said was whispered from one to another.
"But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.