rkbabang

My typical response is: If you are correct then your god knows where I live and he's welcome to come over anytime to introduce himself. If he doesn't I'll just assume he either doesn't want me to believe in him, or he can't pay me a visit because he doesn't exist. If he does exist and wants me to worship him (and will punish me if I don't) without any hard evidence of his existence, then he's a @$$hole and I wan't nothing to do with him. Even if it could be proven that he does exist, he'd have to also prove to me that he is worthy to be worshiped. I don't take lightly to threats. I'm not going to worship something just because this creature is threatening to punish me if I don't.

I just got a spam/ad email from Newegg today, they are offering 10% off your order if you pay with bitcoin. http://promotions.newegg.com/nepro/14-3631/index.html

Yes. Would humans have made it out of the stone age and still be around today if we all thought that it was good to murder fellow humans whenever we got the chance? What we call "morality" is simply instincts that are hardwired into our brains through an evolutionary process which has helped our species survive. Maybe there were groups of humans without "morals", but those no longer exist. Of course through random genome variability there are constantly being born humans without those "moral" instincts and the rest of us need to try to figure out how best to deal with them and protect ourselves from them.

I dream of a day when everyone is wealthy enough that they no longer need to watch reality TV. I dream of a day when everyone is wealthy enough that they can make to-do lists for themselves. Obviously I said many of the habits, not all. So your cherry picking hasn't achieved much. But by all means, keep doing everything you can to preserve your needlessly black and white ideology. I'm going to do something more productive with my time. Hey, I think there's a Pawn Stars marathon on. And you can keep closing your eyes to the point I was trying to make. The point being that you were cherry picking yourself. The items you were talking about where the least likely to have an effect on a person's success in life and therefore the least relevant to the discussion. There is some value, I think, to discussing how people who spend hours watching TV rather than reading; listening to music rather than audio books; and failing to think about the future rather than carefully planning and setting explicit goals for themselves are less successful in life and what to do about it. You focus instead on what people are eating. I agree that it is odd those things are even in the 'study'. But yes, feel free to cherry pick the things that don't matter to give yourself an excuse to avoid thinking about things that do. And then accuse me of being black and white about things. No study or survey is perfect. Rather than focusing on what doesn't matter and throwing out the baby with the bath water, is it not useful to look and see if there are any nuggets of truth in there?

I dream of a day when everyone is wealthy enough that they no longer need to watch reality TV. I dream of a day when everyone is wealthy enough that they can make to-do lists for themselves. How about the day when everyone has two married parents who can show them that a little bit of planning and a lot of hard work can get them wherever they want to go? It's remarkable how many inner-city youth are born out of wedlock (over 70% for blacks, not sure about others but it's bound to be similar). Irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility. Uncle Sam needs to stop subsidizing single motherhood for that to even begin to happen.

I dream of a day when everyone is wealthy enough that they no longer need to watch reality TV. I dream of a day when everyone is wealthy enough that they can make to-do lists for themselves.

Could depend in the interpretation of habits. Is it not possible that when a someone with lower income hears "bad habit" they think of biting their nails while a rich person thinks of something more related to success like beating themselves up for mistakes? It seems totally reasonable that if each has a different bar for what is considered a bad habit that you would get wide discrepancies. You are also talking about the poorest of the poor. Income <$30K with < $5k in assets. I wonder if there would be much of a difference between the middle class (say $75K - $200K income with $200K-$1M in assets) vs. the billionaires? My habits are much closer to the billionaires in this graphic, yet I'm no billionaire. The poor are often poor for a reason, that isn't much of a surprise, but I don't think daily reading and setting goals for oneself is a surefire way to make you a billionaire. It hasn't happened to me anyway. (although I do read much less than 500 pages/day). EDIT: I just noticed that they define 'wealthy' as $160K/yr, $3.2M assets, not what I think of as wealthy and not necessarily billionaires, but my point still stands, the lower middle class probably has habits much closer to those in the "wealthy" category. This could just as easily be a chart of the difference between the habits of the poor and everyone else.

I think it's somewhat impressive a kid that age knows who they are. Buffett looks like he's digesting a satisfying meal right there ................... or he's regretting that last meal. 8) These kids live in Omaha, I have to think that most people in Omaha must know who Warren Buffett is. There aren't that many celebrities living in Omaha, they all must know what their local celebrity looks like. I wonder if the kids knew who McCartney was at the time they were taking the photo?

Yes, but unfortunately for us alive today, cultural evolution can move pretty slowly. Look how long it is taking religion to die. I think religion will be dead and buried once and for all long before the state even starts to decline. I think it's the other way around. Chance of religion dying within 100 years is 0 while the demise of the nation state model might start within the 100 years. I hope you are correct, as currently the state does more harm. I don't mind religion as much as long as it is doesn't get organised and powerful again.

Yes, but unfortunately for us alive today, cultural evolution can move pretty slowly. Look how long it is taking religion to die. I think religion will be dead and buried once and for all long before the state even starts to decline.

+1 Thanks, yeah, Feedly is almost unusable by default, just a bunch of pictures and all your feeds crammed together. My current settings are as follows: How would your feeds ideally be organized? I like how I have feedly set up now (see above settings) I start with the index view where I have all my feeds in their proper categories and I pick one feed to view. I then go back to the index if I want to pick another feed to view. I don't like the feedly views that mix items from all of your feeds together.

Yeah, you're right. Sorry. That wasn't a fair way to characterize you at all. My mental model of why someone becomes right wing and why someone becomes left wing has been in flux for the past few months. As a side-effect of that, I used an incorrect heuristic. Sorry. No problem.

Ok, this argument isn't even in the realm of making sense. The form of your argument is, "to survive, you must eat. Therefore, eating anything (cyanide, stop signs, airplanes, babies) is generally a good idea". The thing that amuses me the most is that you're one of the more right-wing people on the board, but this really sounds like an argument the pigs would make in "Animal Farm". I also disagree with the premise that there's no way to get what you want without hard work. It sounds like a very bleak life. I think maybe you want very different things that me. I think we are completely talking past one another here, so I'll end it. I do want to clear up one thing though since you accused me of being something I detest. I am not even close to being a right winger at all, never mind the one of the "more right-wing people on the board". I don't believe in borders, I'm not religious, I'm not racists, nor homophobic. I think all drugs should be legal and sold over the counter, and I agree with Rosie O'Donnel when she said soldiers are murderers and terrorists. I'd love to see G.W. Bush and Obama convicted as mass murderers. There aren't many things I would find insulting, but being called a right winger is one of them. I agree with all those things above and I would still prefer to be called a right winger over a left winger every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Also make sure you realize left and right (besides being one-dimensional and therefore highly inadequate to quality the complicated political landscape) is highly context specific. What is left in one place is right in the other. Finally I'll confess to being a Libertarian. Everyone in my country would call that extreme right. ;) I don't particularly like "left wing" either, but I guess I prefer it to right wing. I like libertarian, but I find most libertarians are still statists, so that doesn't quite fit me either. Maybe "extreme libertarian", Anarcho-capitalist, or just anti-state. I find that libertarians are only labeled right-wing by leftists, but are usually labeled left-wing by conservatives.

Ok, this argument isn't even in the realm of making sense. The form of your argument is, "to survive, you must eat. Therefore, eating anything (cyanide, stop signs, airplanes, babies) is generally a good idea". The thing that amuses me the most is that you're one of the more right-wing people on the board, but this really sounds like an argument the pigs would make in "Animal Farm". I also disagree with the premise that there's no way to get what you want without hard work. It sounds like a very bleak life. I think maybe you want very different things that me. I think we are completely talking past one another here, so I'll end it. I do want to clear up one thing though since you accused me of being something I detest. I am not even close to being a right winger at all, never mind the one of the "more right-wing people on the board". I don't believe in borders, I'm not religious, I'm not racists, nor homophobic. I think all drugs should be legal and sold over the counter, and I agree with Rosie O'Donnel when she said soldiers are murderers and terrorists. I'd love to see G.W. Bush and Obama convicted as mass murderers. There aren't many things I would find insulting, but being called a right winger is one of them.

+1 Thanks, yeah, Feedly is almost unusable by default, just a bunch of pictures and all your feeds crammed together. My current settings are as follows: General Start Page Which page would you like feedly to load when you start feedly ? Tips: You can also bookmark any feedly page and jump back to that page directly. Index Default View Change the view setting of all category and feed pages at once. Magazine Featured Showcase the 3 most engaging posts at the top of each page. No Hide Read Posts Should feedly hide articles once you have read them? Yes Categories With No Updates Use this knob to hide the categories with no updates in the left navigation panel. Hide Display Density How dense should the list view be? Compact (densest) Source Index Should the magazine view include a list of the feeds in that category? No Index Link Should feedly include the index link in the left navigation bar? Yes

Whether it be your employment, your property, your hobbies, your money, or your family, there is usually no way to get what you want in life without hard work. So contrary to your theory that raising children is not in a person's best interest simply because it entails effort, as every successful person knows intuitively, hard work usually is in your best interest.

Yes, but raising kids is a lot of work. One could equally make the argument "surely helping people build their retirements comes with an ROI - the happiness of seeing your customers having a financially-secure retirement where they have the assets to realize their retirement dreams". Really, if you start looking at things from "intrinsic reward" incentives, then you've basically conceded rkbabang's argument anyway. You could say that many politicians govern well because of the intrinsic rewards of improving their country and the well-being of their fellow citizens, which I think rkbabang wouldn't agree with at all. Rkbabang, I think understand your position. Parenting is a counterexample that refutes your rule, so you'll pretend that you and your kids are one entity instead of modifying your world view. That said, I understand it. If you concede that parents can act against their own best interests on behalf of their kids, then it's possible that other people might sometimes act against their own best interests as well. (FWIW, I think you are mostly right that people usually act in their own best interests. I just recoil against black and white world views.) It isn't black and white, nothing ever is. There are 99.99999% of politicians and then there is Ron Paul, there are parents who give away or even kill their kids, and yes, there are probably good financial advisers who put their clients' interests before their own. But you are refusing to accept that sometimes there are general rules that apply almost universally. Also, I don't think the parenting thing was a cop out. There has not been millions of years of evolution to make human beings want to help others with their retirement savings.

Hmm, OK, here's a perverse counterexample: parenting. Raising kids take up piles of money and time, yet I think many parent/child relationships work well. I think you misunderstand what I am saying. I want to raise my kids and I equate their well being with my own (I have been wired to think such through millions of years of evolution). Now if you put me in a situation where society benefits only if I do some harm to my children, or even just put other people's kids above my own, the results will not be good (for society anyway).

I've been using Feedly. At first I didn't like it as much as Google Reader, but it has grown on me. There are some settings to make it more usable, for instance set "index" view as your startpage.

This is an important point. Whenever someone's incentives are in direct contradiction to your own, you should not trust that person with anything which you value. It doesn't matter one wit if he is a good and decent person, everyone will do what is in their own best interest. Any system or arrangement where someone else needs to go against his own best interest for you to benefit, will not work well for you. Whenever I look at something that isn't working, whether it be a system (such as a government) or a professional arrangement (such as with a financial adviser) I ask myself what the incentives are for each person involved. Usually the problem can be seen clearly from that point of view. If the incentive are perverse in someway (i.e. requiring someone to do what isn't in his best interest to do) than the system or relationship can never be made to work.

I agree completely, only it could be 10-25 years from now. Absolute worst case disaster scenario: the US Fed-gov nationalizes it and uses it. It would make Orwell's vision seem optimistic.

Texas family journeyed to New Hampshire using only bitcoin "Bleish and her husband, John Bush, drove from San Marcos, Texas, between Austin and San Antonio, to Lancaster, in New Hampshire’s Great North Woods, for the Porcupine Freedom Festival, an annual campsite gathering of the Free State Project. They packed 2-year-old Aliana and 16-month-old Bill into the minivan and traveled almost the entire 4,400-mile journey spending only bitcoin for everything from hotel rooms to snacks...." "They found one restaurant in Washington, D.C., and one in New York that accepted bitcoin directly, and participated in a pilot program at a Holiday Inn in Brooklyn. In all three cases, though, the employee cashing out their bill had to call a supervisor for help. “It’s been a learning experience for us, to know that even if they say they accept bitcoin, they’re still learning,” Bleish said..."

Racoons with machine guns sounds awesome, even better than .

One topic that is conspicuously missing is: "What are you holding today?"

13 and 14 at least have a different answers. All the others are either "no" or "none". How about 17. What's your favorite WEB quote? 18. How many Berkshire products do you use regularly? 19. When will BRK-A hit $X/share? And of course? 20. Who will be the next WEB?