rchi

I had the same experience on fact checking

I was taught it costs 100million dollars with one in ten chance of success

You are proving my point. There are many difficulties to fixing the system. Broken system persists because 'solutions' cannot be easily/successfully implemented.

I wonder if Goldacre's solutions would actually help. If it's so easy to fix the system, people would have already done it.

I really enjoyed Simonton's work but was quite surprised by the equal-odds rule you mentioned. It doesn't seem to apply to scientists at the highest level e.g. Einstein.

because most people secretly desire to be rich - that desire is in our cognitive makeup, so is the desire to bash rich people.

this is becoming a cliche!

great article. it's refreshing hearing from someone who feel secure about their life.

Science is not stamp collecting. It's hardly about putting in the hours, and all about originality. Many Nobel Prize winners have hobbies in music or art.

it's all about originality, which she clearly lacked.

poems are extremely expensive in terms of time. only those with the sharpest mind can afford to create them.

I had similar experience with AirBnb in NY too. It was a week before I wanted to go and it took me about 10 requests to get one that's available.

potential counter arguments can be found in daniel pink's interview at econtalk.org

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/08/daniel_pink_on.html

It's ridiculous to say that there is no talent. obviously, talent, passion, zeitgeist, deliberate practice, luck etc all matter. each factor in your favour nudges your probability towards success.

If we could live for a million years, then talent probably doesn't matter compared to deliberate practice even in fields such as pure mathematics. But life is short and that in many fields, success is relative (ie good is irrelevant, you need to be top 1 %). In those cases, once you are behind, the probability of catching up to other people in your field is slim.

it's funny that the reward of starting a hedge fund is 'marry that yoga instructor'. 1. seems like a pretty indirect strategy for getting what you want. 2. quite an insult to the yoga teachers.

The following is from a talk at the New York Public Library.

ERIC SCHMIDT: But in fairness to those people[finance people], had they come to Silicon Valley in 1999 they would have received a far greater payoff during our little bubble. So who are we to criticize the Wall Street folks for having their bubble? It was just a bigger bubble.

WALTER ISAACSON: Do you think though that Google creates something that’s more real than somebody on Wall Street creating a financial instrument?

ERIC SCHMIDT: To be honest, not really. When I walked into the company, I said, “People pay you for this thing, these little ads?”

http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/events/live_2009_11_...

What's interesting is that stories like this have been around for decades but never deterred young ivy league grads from joining Goldman when the industry is popular.

Now so many people is quick to criticize the finance industry. Although it's true that the bailout was a great crime, I don't see how lobbyists, pharmaceutical executives and advertisers are much better. These guys get paid millions too...at least Goldman doesn't screw with people's mind.

1. If 4 mil at 30 is not enough, it would never be enough. 2. Someone with the drive, intelligence etc to accumulate 4mil by age 30 would be extremely bored retiring at 30. 3. There are different forms of wealth (relationships, experiences, reputation, health, intelligence, peace of mind etc), and money is merely one kind.

on the titanic, 46% of women in the 3rd class was saved whereas only 33% of men in the 1st class survived.

how much do a second year trader make at these prop trading firms?

how does tradeworx compare to jane street capital?

I agree with you that there is a spectrum of risk taking from gambling to investing. Nevertheless both involve taking risk and expecting payoff sometime in the future. Both the estimate of risk and estimate of payoff could be wrong or could change dynamically. I wouldn't be surprised if some argue that US government bonds are more risky than investing a diversified portfolio of forex today.

I don't know if you can differentiate between gambling and investing in real life. Both activities involve making bets with certain payoff and certain probability in mind.

It's often really difficult to know the actual risk you were exposed to and whether your probability assessments were reasonably accurate.

I guess because only a small minority can earn a living as a musician.

I doubt that Obama (with his intellect) genuinely believes that this policy will help the economy at all.

Disappointing on so many levels.

It's all relative. Our perception of whether a performance is good is dependent on other performances we've heard. 10000 hours only works because most people don't do it.