mycorrhizal

It seems crazy to me that we expect companies to tackle this problem. If you don't vaccinate your children when there are no extenuating circumstance (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/should-not-vacc.html). Then how can this be seen as anything but neglect and child endangerment, which should be handled by child protective services.

No, the discussion was specifically a response to a comment speculating that a person with 100M in 1971 would have been better offer investing in the S&P 500.

Quotes from the GP

> Actually, from the article it's unclear if he's beaten the S&P500 as an investor.

> If his total investments at that time was $100 million, which seems somewhat reasonable given how much he lost in the margin call, investing that in the S&P500 would be worth $4 billion today, which is quite a bit more than the $2.3 billion he's actually worth.

And the parent made a snarky comment about why internet commentators always bring up the s&p 500. And the simple answer is that for most of us ETFs are probably one of the best options for growing wealth. No one actually thinks they will be billionaires by retirement age with ETFs. So if you want to be a billionaire go get richer parents and if that doesn't work, invent Google. Good luck.

Because it has been very well demonstrated that almost all active investors, fund managers etc... virtually never beat the market cumulatively over decades. There are some exceptions, but not more than you would expect from random chance due to large sample size (a lot of people playing). So given that information why should most of us spend the effort trying to beat the market especially considering the low expense ratio on some really solid ETFs. Generally speaking if you expect the economy to continue to grow for the next few decades than index funds are a pretty good option.

Definitely impressive work, but the fact that this is hard to distinguish from human text, if true, is pretty sad for humans. Even sadder if anyone reading this could be swayed by such an argument.

Heck, maybe having to compete with this will raise human discourse (Joking).

Aren't a lot of these European countries a lot more pragmatic (cut throat?) about who can go to college? For example in Germany, I was under the impression that around adolescence they start dividing people into the university path people and the non-university path people. I don't think this type of system would go over well in the US with its individualism/"control your own destiny" mindset.

I'm not saying the European countries have it wrong, but their systems seem far from free college for everybody (how it is often reported in the states) and much closer to free college for the worthy. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

What kind of question is that? Do you seriously expect me to give an "exact" solution? Furthermore how many complicated issues have solutions that have no potential to cause harm and are guaranteed to help. I think it is pretty clear at this point that there is no magic solution to climate change and we have to make some collective sacrifices. Individually I did make a "sacrifice" by going vegan. After 3 years I haven't noticed any harm and I'm confident it has helped about epsilon amount. I guess that fits your criteria.

The cynical answer is about 7-15: themselves, their family and close friends. Or at least thats how it appears in the US given how little we do about it, even though we (half) give it plenty of lip service.

Another interesting story in undergrad I had a thesis supervisor who was working in cosmology, but had a 20 year career in high energy particle physics (5 as a grad student, 10 as a research scientist and 5 as a pre-tenured faculty member). Basically the moment he got tenure he switched from experimental particle to observational cosmology because as he said "I saw the writing on the wall that after the higgs there was no clear direction for high energy and no clear direction for even finding a way out of the aimlessness." I thought it was kind of crazy that he had a multi-year plan for leaving particle, but I guessed it worked out for him he is now reasonably successful and is a leader in both DESI and LSST. I ended up leaving physics entirely.

From physics, it seems like cosmology has a whole bunch. What the heck is dark matter made out of? Why is the the expansion of the universe accelerating? These seem qualitatively different than the "aesthetic problems" she points to.

Not the OP but I believe the second option would be raising the child.

I appreciate the response, but I definitely did not mean to imply that I don't care about other people's problems, but was simply questioning and hoping to get a more exact and maybe quantitative picture of the control these companies have. Perhaps I made a mistake in thinking too much about my own (important) personal decisions and the information and processes I use to make them.

With respect to the sneaky game purchases are you referring to the stories of facebook letting children make purchases and not reimbursing the parents? Because the ability to control children is much different than the ability to control adults.

The wedding ring for cash is definitely creepy and I can see how that would add additional distress to your friend. But I guess my point is: how much did that ad contribute to your friend deciding to get a divorce? Had she not see that ad and probably other similar ads would she have not gotten a divorce? I think at least attempting to quantify these questions is important when trying to understand the level of control of these companies. We have to go beyond "This company showed a creepy ad(s)" to "This company showed a creepy ad(s) and this is the extent it influenced my final decision."

Right, so I was speaking personally there and I can confidently say among the priority of things I care about my relationship with my wife, how I manage my budget and my overarching career goals all of the decisions related to these things are done with a great deal of deliberation and research. So I'm not saying I'm somehow special and immune to propaganda, but I think when practically anyone takes the time to research and deliberate on big decisions and asking people they trust for advice these companies have a marginal effect.

I can specifically point to times where these companies have and have not influenced my decisions. For example my wife and I decided we could afford a 3k vacation this budget was informed by looking at our incomes, expenses, savings and job security. But social media definitely influenced where we chose to go and what we did once we got there. I'm much more concerned with the first decision (I can afford to blow 3k) than the second (where we ended up going).

I definitely don't contest the amount of tracking these companies do. I wouldn't even be surprised if it goes beyond what I can even imagine. But when it comes to control can we at least attempt to quantify it or at least make it a bit more exact. For example I'm positive these companies have influence over what brand of headphones I buy next, but I'm even more positive, at least on a personal level, that these companies have zero influence when it comes to convincing me to take money out of my IRA and using it to buy something I can't afford. Frankly what I'm getting at is I buy into the argument that these companies can influence smaller behaviors, like restaurant A or B but I'm really dubious of their influence reaching to more important decisions like to get a divorce or not maxing out my 401k and/or IRA. So I find myself not really caring about their influence because I don't think it pertains to the big decisions that I really care about.

I absolutely agree if your model is wrong any causal inferences you draw will be wrong. However his framework does provide mechanisms for determining if your data is inconsistent with your model (ie certain independences should or should not exist). So hopefully if your model is wrong your data will tell you so and you can change your model.

I think you are overstating Judea Pearl's argument. He doesn't claim it is impossible to answer causal questions (on observational data) without resorting to do-calculus. What he does claim is that to answer causal (interventional or counterfactual) questions you need to define a model and reason on that model in a way that transforms the question into conditional probabilities. Do-calculus provides a framework to help you perform that reasoning, but certainly people have been using things like the backdoor criterion before the invention of do-calculus to answer interventional questions.

He might claim that any other method can be reduced to do-calculus. I'm not sure. I do believe at the core of his argument is need for an explicit model.

You are way overstating the knowledge of most practicing physicians. You are right that most of them learned about these topics at some point, but have quickly forgotten them. I worked with a pediatrician who works in under privileged areas and conducts public health research and she had forgotten the difference between a diploid and a haploid cell (for anyone not bio savvy this is bio 101) yet she still does a fine job treating patients and understands the problems of the communities she works in.

Different people have different strengths and collaboration is all about enabling others to use their strengths. You do not need to learn most of the things on your list before you can make a positive contribution to medicine. Your list would exclude most physicians from contributing.

I agree with you on the having kids issue, but I disagree that individuals should just treat it as a macro problem.

Even in the US (where I live) there is planning you can do on an individual level to help you avoid some of the negative consequences of climate change. I actually think this would be an interesting discussion on HN. Some of the steps that I think are most important concern mainly where you choose to live for a specific example Miami could fare very badly wrt to flooding and increased storms. I can't imagine that will be good for property values not to mention safety. I would be interested to read about anyone else's suggestions on what plans someone could make on an individual level for both themselves and their children.

Thanks for the link and extra info! You have definitely looked at this more carefully than I have.

One practical use that has been studied (only a little) is to use Esperanto as a stepping stone to learning other languages. Essentially the idea is that you can first spend a few months learning Esperanto and that might actually speed up the total time for learning a "third" language. I believe school systems in both the UK and France have experimented with this, both with promising results.

That sounds more like a career goal than a cultural contribution. The grandparent was talking about how our culture will suffer and we will all lose out by not subsidizing humanity degrees. But last I check we seem to be saturated by media with new television programs, podcasts, books, music and other visual arts are constantly being created.

All that I said I do agree we shouldn't be burdening our youth with crippling student debt. But the idea that our culture comes from our humanities departments seems a little absurd and not supported by evidence.

Why do you need a graduate degree in humanities to make cultural contributions? Many people who have made substantial cultural contributions never earned a graduate or even an undergraduate degree in humanities.

Machine learning is used widely across a huge number of industries and fields from internet search, pharmaceuticals, mining/energy, digital security, entertainment, etc... So the commercial benefits are definitely tangible and not just "media hype".

On computability of intelligence. I'm not an expert on this, but many people study the dynamics of biological neural networks and can represent these dynamics as PDEs which can then be mapped to electrical circuits. Granted approximations happen along the way and it has been difficult to scale these methods to large population of neurons. It still points to a solid argument that biological neural networks can be represented on a silicon substrate. This is basically what the entire field of neuromorphic engineering is focused on.

When I was in Stockholm a few months ago using cash seemed actively discouraged. There were several restaurants and other businesses I went to that refused to accept cash.

I definitely see where you are coming from, but I think it is the wrong approach in these situations. The question to ask is are these loans negatively impacting the economy in a way that makes a material difference to me? (also a selfish viewpoint) If the answer is yes than I would support programs to help ameliorate this situation. That being said I have no idea what the right answer is to that question.

On your first point I really don't think this is true in CA with community colleges providing a solid (relatively easy) path to the UCs. I was able to go from a local CC to a local UC and because of that I was able to finish with no debt. This lack of debt has afforded me a great deal of flexibility after college which has so far worked out well for me. Things would have been way different if I had a bunch of debt hanging over me.

Another positive about CCs is since they are so cheap you can actually take your time a find the right major for you. I tried a bunch of different stuff before something stuck and with the exception of opportunity costs that extra exploration cost me about $500. I consider that a pretty good deal.

I actually do. My point was that on a spectrum of "apex predator totally tailored for eating meat" and total herbivore able to digest cellulose we are far from both ends.

The gp specifically stated we have "evolved to preferentially run on fatty meat from large game animals" and that is just plain wrong.

I'm sorry, but this is just so wrong. I'm not saying humans can't eat meat, but if you compare the digestive track and other physiological factors of humans to animals that actually evolved to eat meat like lions the difference is startling. On the spectrum of cow to lion we are very far from the lion end so to say humans "evolved to preferentially run on fatty meat from large game animals" is just plain wrong.

Here is a somewhat entertaining video with some specifics and sources. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmXynDLkbXY

There is also a ton of anthropological data on how our diets actually did evolve and although there are exceptions the gist is that we mainly relied on gathered plants with occasional meat.

>> Someone said any field with "Science" in the name isn't really a science. Computer science, data science, political science, social science, etc

The etc. would also include cognitive science/neuroscience, medical science, earth science, material science, agricultural science, veterinary science, geoscience, food science, etc.

And of course as we all know climate science is fake./s

Generally when I hear a field with the word "Science" in the name I think of it as a more interdisciplinary field. Take Earth Science it draws on different areas of physics (ie wave physics), biology (ie ecology) and chemistry (ie kinetics). Earth science is still very much science it is just doesn't fit perfectly into the more foundational fields.

You might be interested in the Ronin Institute, basically a bunch of former academics who left traditional institutions, but are still pursuing scientific research. http://ronininstitute.org/

I'm still a grad student, but am definitely considering pursing my own goals once I finish. Fortunately the finical barriers are not insurmountable for some really interesting fields.

A bit off topic but related to your link, if anyone is interested in more details on gardening with soil ecology in mind the teaming series by Jeff Lowefels is great.

There is Teaming with Microbes, Teaming with Nutrients and Teaming with Fungi.