> Startups don't win by attacking. They win by transcending. There are exceptions of course, but usually the way to win is to race ahead, not to stop and fight.
> Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best people to work for them. They can hire people who will put up with them because they need a job. But the best people have other options. A mean person can't convince the best people to work for him unless he is super convincing. And while having the best people helps any organization, it's critical for startups.
This is just lame, self-serving rationale. One of the most vapid arguments I read in recent memory.
It's the sort of rationale that results in "good people are successful, therefore successful people are good".
Winning quite often has nothing to do with being good or mean, and only with being related to the correct people and having access to more money. This, paired with the fact that most people with a lot of money are all sociopaths does not paint a very rosy "mean people fail" bullshit.
> Nobody cares about the whole region. People living and paying taxes in Spain care about what's happening in Spain, not all the way in Romania or Bulgaria. So Spaniard elect politicians that will do what's best for Spain not what's best for other EU countries. Same for every other EU member. Politicians get elected on how they can improve the lives of the people in that specific country.
This is an extremely nearsighted view of the bloc.
Things that benefit the EU will benefit my country too. Things that make Romania or Bulgaria worse will also impact the other countries in the bloc. I thought we learned this lesson when countries like Greece had fiscal issues back in the day.
Politicians at the EU level should be concerned by their country, but also should be concerned about the bloc as a whole.
And this is true to national politics too. A member of a national parliament typically is concerned with the province/county/constituency he represents, but also with national issues as a whole.
It's an interesting phenomenon. When I first started using LLMs, I was impressed by its natural language generation capabilities, and thought it could write considerably well - using elegant structures, etc and so forth.
But after a while those structures became a sort of signature of LLM writing. They repeat the same style way too much, and with enough interactions it becomes grating to read.
> Worth remembering that Hungary, Slovakia, et-al have loved the EU for many, many years after joining. It's not like they suddenly decided to hate the EU for absolutely no reason. So then let's examine and talk about those reasons, instead of calling them schizophrenic which doesn't solve anything and just breeds more animosity and extremism.
Please do so.
All 3 countries benefit massively from being in the EU, particularly Poland, who is on track to become one of the largest EU economies.
In fact, every country in the bloc benefits immensely from being in the bloc. The UK is a good reminder that leaving only brings stagnation.
European countries are relatively small in the world stage. Think that Germany has the popularity of Chinese provinces. In trade negotiations the EU gets to play much tougher than any individual country would ever dream of, and free access to the whole bloc is a massive benefit.
Is it perfect? Obviously not. But more often than not, the downsides and inefficiencies come from the fact that individual countries still hold too much power, and have too many redundant bureaucracies with the bloc itself.
>All 3 countries benefit massively from being in the EU, particularly Poland, who is on track to become one of the largest EU economies.
So what? That doesn't change the fact that living costs far outpaced gains for a lot of people. They still deserve to be angry and ask for how are you gonna fix their problem.
If they think the fix is leaving the EU... Well, good luck. What else can I say?
Cost of living being expensive is due to national government inability to handle housing, infrastructure, etc and so forth. The EU does not dictate housing policy in member states, for example.
If the population is stupid enough to misunderstand the role of the EU and the role of their own national government, and prefers to listen to retarded propaganda that blames the EU for all their woes, then they deserve the hardship that will follow as much as they deserve being angry.
We just need a distinct definition first. Moderated forums were kind of great in general. Early social media with chronological feeds of your friends were useful too. The nebulous algorithms pulling people into reinforcing rabbit holes of trash or simply optimizing for "engagement" (outrage) is the primary issue IMHO.
If we can only ban the bad stuff, great, but it's rarely that easy.
Typically what I call Social Media is akin to things such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Anything that has a personalized "feed" generated by an algorithm.
Old moderates forums had no personalized anything.
Incidentally, as much as I despise Reddit, this would exclude Reddit from being banned. Last time I used it, it didn't really have a personalized feed (unless things changed ever since).
I could subscribe to subreddits and see the activity on what I subscribed, but anyone with the same subscription list (fully controlled by the user) would see the same activity, so it was not a personalized feed per se.
that's great idea until you will try to define what is social media - HN, Reddit, youtube, various PHPBB forums? so pretty much ban any human interaction online other than 101?
Not that hard. Ban any social media that has a personalized algorithmically generated feed. Those things can be gamed for engagement and are poisonous both to the individual and to society.
HN, Reddit, PHPBB forums would be excluded. There's no personalization outside the user control on those as far as I am aware.
Last time I used Reddit, I could aee the activity on the boards I was subscribed to, but anyone with the same subscriptions would see the same activity. There's o dark pattern there.
And just to be clear, I absolutely despise Reddit. I don't even like HN all that much to be frank. I would be the last person that would try to protect Reddit. I am just being coherent with my thoughts on the matter.
Payoffs have many forms, the most important for pure research being "advancement of knowledge". We have nearly zero expectation of knowledge advancement from yet another radio frequency collider.
Then the mystery is how the CERN "raised" those $1B. Maybe they have an amazing PR department? Or maybe the project is going to be such a huge success that they are acting from the future [1]?
CERN and large construction projects like the FCC employ tens of thousands of physicists and engineers across decades. It's hard to convince someone of something when their livelihood depends on them not believing it.
"Decoupling science from the state" is just bullshit from "government icky, taxation is theft" morons.
No, governments should definitely fund scientific research. When it is public it is the only guarantee that it will benefit everyone. Scientific research done by private entities is kneecapped by their financial interests (and be very sure they will bury any advance that jeopardize their financial interests).
How are radio telescopes and mars rovers in my interest? How would you know what is in my interest? I worked for my money so the person in the best position to judge what is in my interest is me. I am sorry for you if that is such a hard concept to understand.
You’re free to vote towards your goals, or move to countries which invest basically nothing in research. There’s plenty of them. I suspect you may not enjoy such great quality of life there.
In case it wasn’t a rhetorical question, they’re in your interest because through the process of building them we improve our understanding of the world, develop new technologies which the industrial system wouldn’t have backed, educate the next generation of engineers and scientists, and inspire the kids that will form the second next generation.
Private research already exists and works well in some fields, mine included. But public research is just as important since it can afford higher risk and longer scope. You can’t begin to count the startups that were created as spin-offs of university research groups.
Frankly, your particular interest is completely irrelevant.
Scientific research is of societal interest, even if your particular interest differ. The best you can do is vote for parties that promise to shut down scientific research, or find another group of likeminded morons and form such a party with them.
If you disagree with the concept of taxes, well, sucks to be you. May your desires never come to fruition, because life would be hell.
It would be great if we had line-item vetoes on our tax forms. However, we don't. You have to fund some things you don't like or agree with, and so do I, and so do the rest of the taxpayers.
That's just how taxes work. Like capitalism and democracy, taxes suck, but nobody has come up with adequate substitutes that check all the necessary boxes.
Why wouldn't I veto everything except the give me back my money tax? Now, I'm not actually ridiculously selfish asshole that doesn't think of others or the long term consequences of my choices, but it's a prisoners dilemma, with everybody else in your country, and defecting gives you money back. Cynically I don't think that'll work.
It wouldn't be a "Give money to anyone you like" kind of choice, but "Allocate money to these departments." Funding that you assign to one category would have to come out of another. Think basic research is a waste? Allocate less to NSF and more to foreign aid, or to something else that you prefer. Don't want to fund welfare? Move the money to defense, and so forth.
Obviously still open to gaming and abuse, but it's not as if the current system isn't.
> Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best people to work for them. They can hire people who will put up with them because they need a job. But the best people have other options. A mean person can't convince the best people to work for him unless he is super convincing. And while having the best people helps any organization, it's critical for startups.
This is just lame, self-serving rationale. One of the most vapid arguments I read in recent memory.
It's the sort of rationale that results in "good people are successful, therefore successful people are good".
Winning quite often has nothing to do with being good or mean, and only with being related to the correct people and having access to more money. This, paired with the fact that most people with a lot of money are all sociopaths does not paint a very rosy "mean people fail" bullshit.
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