I think when you start talking about the financial future of your family, it makes more sense when you're a line employee. But when you're on a salary well into the six figures, it sounds disinegenuous (to me) to say "we're struggling here". By all means go for "hey, I'm in demand and thinking of moving - business is business", but "I'm moving because I'm concerned about my personal finances"?
But then again, I'm not the guy who does salary negotiations...
I appreciate your point of view and to some extent I definitely concur.
I think that's the difference between a professional and an amateur.
Saying something along the lines of - "hey, I'm in demand and thinking of moving - business is business" even if its true, kinda just would make any company want to kick the person to the curve. Maybe not at that moment, but believe me, that person is now on some blacklist. As IT people (and yes, I am generalizing here) we don't fully appreciate the power of being blunt without being blunt. A lot of it has to do with saving face for both sides. It's a skill I even have to work on but for the people that I have seen that are very good at it, they are very effective with their work.
It's like doing a deal with salesperson and afterwards you realize that you maybe got screwed a little bit, but gosh darn it, you still like that salesperson quite a bit. I guess this falls under charisma.
In terms of the financial future, I don't think anyone is talking about anybody struggling in these positions. I wasn't implying that in my statement. What I was implying was that given any rational person (even one with millions), having a choice between making 10x more or 5x more or staying the same, all other things equal, it would be hard to not consider the choice. Money is Money. And, one thing about people that have made the millions, they still tend to consider every dollar as important as the next, since they realize quite rightly how hard it is to make money.
It's very likely that Neal was facing this 5x-10x type of multiplier. I do think that when you are facing the 0.5x-2x multiplier than the decision does become much harder.
At the level being discussed here, I don't think it's a question of avoiding struggle, but rather of ensuring your family's wealth for generations to come. It would be difficult to turn down such an offer, especially if the work would still be interesting.
To channel Biggie Smalls via Ben Horowitz, "don't you know Bad Boys move in silence and violence?". If competitors don't know you're well funded, they're more likely to ignore you. On a more practical level, it keeps the bottom feeder companies which troll crunchbase/techcrunch/etc and spam you with recruiting/etc. offers for months away. There's not a lot of upside in letting people know you're funded before a product is launched.
A vile costs less than $1 per hit and a fraction of that price for someone "in the family". You can only move so much though since it's not a habit.
Several factors favor a small source of distributors. Ergot is dangerous to work with, it's a difficult synthesis, and the overhead costs of making 1,000 hits and 1,000,000,000 is essentially the same.
> if nobody is forced to contend with your mind, nobody knows it exists.
I'm sure this has already been explored somewhere, but I've always wondered what it says about us as humans that we consider our lives in isolation to be meaningless, but put a bunch of meaningless people together into a society, and impacting them becomes very meaningful. What's going on here, synergy?
You know, I feel ashamed every time I think this because I know I haven't fully thought it through, but why do we need to share the same country with these bird-brained politicians? I mean, would it really be so bad to let these people secede and have their own country? Yes, there is the argument that we are stronger (in some sense of the word) together than apart, but who really gains from this arrangement? Let them live in their own middle ages like the Taliban and leave everyone else alone.
Because it would only take a single generation for each group to split in half.
Are you planning to to do mass migrations every few years to force people with different opinions to go to a new location?
And why is there a need for geographical separation of ideas anyway?
People have wrong ideas about TONS of things. What makes this one so important that you would split the country over it? For most people the biological origin of the world is a very unimportant issue.
And do NOT answer me that the difference is scientific belief of not, because most people have no understanding of the science at all, no matter what they believe.
What it's actually a proxy for is acceptance of authority or not. Some people believe this authority, some this one - but there is no real difference between them - neither one actually understands the subject matter at all.
Blame Lincoln. The South tried to secede, but the Union of course did not let them. Big mistake, if you ask me, as "holy" as the fighting of the Civil War is presented in this country's history. I think the Northern US would have been better off without the South, culturally and economically.
But what do I know, as most of my ancestors (except for a few natives) came here after the Civil War.
It's been years since I've had a history class, so I'll just speak hypothetically. If I were running a country at risk of being divided, I might go to war to prevent secession if the rebelling territories had resources I needed. Examples include cotton, rivers/ports/shipping lanes, farmland, etc.
I know I'll probably get down-votes for this, but its probably good that there ARE people who would at least question Evolution and the Big Bang. There are significant problems with both theories, but most people just assume "its a fact" not because they KNOW, just because thats what they've always been told. But there are plenty of reasons to doubt without having to invoke religion.
One should always be open to the possibility that a pet theory can be falsified, but doubting some form of evolution and the big bang theory is probably irrational at this point. Quite simply, there are no better explanations for the universe and the diversity of life on earth. If you doubt some form of evolution, then you will have your work cut out for you to find a better theory. An alternative theory will have to explain geological and biological data at least as well as evolution without falling prey to falsifying data. It'll also have to make non-trivial predictions about future geological and biological observations. If you're determined to doubt something you can certainly do better than doubting evolution and big bang theories.
People do question evolution and the Big Bang. They do it by developing alternate models that take into account all the evidence we already have available to us, and see if their alternate model has sufficient explanatory power.
If you're not doing this, you're not questioning the prevailing models. Making a public statement from a position of secular authority is not questioning evolution and Big Bang; it's a demonstration of your own ignorance and nothing more.
That's not really an accurate description of why the states were established. The initial states were the consequence of different centers of colonization and the limits of transportation and communication speeds. Their borders were mostly arbitrary geographical boundaries (hey, there's a river!). They developed unique economic and cultural traditions based on what could be grown, produced, or not, in their borders. That people didn't want to join them up into one stronger federal government has stronger ties to the general tribal nature of people and the significantly different economic and cultural needs. Movement between them was hardly the motivation.
> That people didn't want to join them up into one stronger federal government has stronger ties to the general tribal nature of people and the significantly different economic and cultural needs.
To be fair, one of the reasons was to limit the power of the federal government. But that power was limited partly in order to prevent one state from having power over another; that's why the Senate is so laid out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise), and one of the reasons the federal government is seated in neutral territory (Federalist #43).
That sounds fantastic, and it's a good thought---but at a certain point we are all interdependent on one-another. Relative to belief in science and global warming, what Arkansas does with its air certainly affects areas outside of Arkansas.
That's why we have a federal court system, right? If areas outside of Arkansas have a problem with what Arkansas is doing to their air, they can produce evidence in a court of law and put a stop to it.
If the areas outside of Arkansas have a problem with what they teach their students (and it's really that damaging), well, just let a clear winner emerge over time.
We need more women in trash collection. It is a national problem. The disparity between genders in the field is huge, has been going on for years, and relies on outdated, presumptuous, and sexist stereotypes that women do not like to be smelly and dirty. And the discrimination goes all the way up to the top: every CEO of a trash collection company you meet is male. We need to reach every girl and indoctrinate them to like trash as early as we can so that more of them will go on to collect it.
What I mean is: Sure, we really like computer science and allied fields. But there are other ways to live, and it seems really arrogant (and speaking of stereotypes, American ;) to unilaterally decide that our way is the best way and roll in and try and "fix" the problem. Anecdote, but the people who do well in CS are intrinsically into it.
Keep in mind that they are a supervised technique so they can't be compared to what google is doing.
80s style neural networks are flexible and powerful learners. Theoretically they can learn any function, and in practice they often come up with decent solutions. They aren't perfect - there is no guarantee they will find the best solution ('local minima'), and they operate as a black-box, meaning we can't properly interpret them.
I've heard the saying "80s style neural networks are usually the second best solution", which is oversimplified but close to correct.
