Liberty

I wasn't doing a trick question based on genetics, I was saying "your kid" as in "a kid you consider your own, that you raised and love" (biological or not). It's not even a theoretical question. Some people have let their kids die voluntarily because of stupid religious beliefs. Is forcing them to cure the kid more evil than letting the kid die because they don't believe in medicine?

Because to a non-libertarian, anything they consider good is a right and must be mandated by force if necessary and anything they consider bad is pure evil and must be outlawed by force if necessary. There is no grey area between must-do and must-not-do. "I'd likely do it, but I wouldn't force someone else to." is an incomprehensible position. To be completely honest, I consider forcing someone to do 'good' (or punishing him for not doing 'good') evil. I'll just move over rkbabang's strawman and go straight to the more interesting point: Situations aren't binary, and evils aren't all on the same level. Not curing your sick child when you can is evil, and maybe someone forcing you to cure your sick child is also on some level evil, but are they equivalent? And is the good that comes from your child being cured more than balancing out whatever "evil" comes from you being forced to do something that you wouldn't do voluntarily? In the real world, there are many variables that need to be balanced out and taken into account, as inelegant as that makes the model to people who like to see everything in black and white.

So you don't believe in sins of omission. Ok. If we meet, I won't shake your hand, that'll be neutral. My example clearly went as far as I could to make the situation overwhelmingly obvious, but you can come up with scenarios that are less far on that spectrum and realistic based on the same principle.

Fine, reformulate my thought experiment to be realistic in whatever way you want. Ie. You're in a situation where you can safely release kidnapped children sex slaves. If you choose to do nothing, to me that's an evil omission. Ie. You have information that would save someone innocent's life (you know they've been poisoned and know what the antidote is). If you say or do nothing, that's evil. It's the whole Walter White watching Jane die without doing anything scenario... Your point is also interesting, but not really what I want to get into. I was just pointing out that I disagree that there can be no evil in inaction.

Clutch, you're correct in the real world, but you're changing my thought experiment, which is different from answering it. The trolley problem doesn't exist in the real world either, but we can still learn things from thinking about it.

Thought experiment: There's a button in front of you. If you push it, everybody in the world will stop suffering and be forever happy (kidnapped kids held as sex slaves will be freed, cancer patients will be cured, etc), each according to their very own definition of happiness. There's no catch, no downside, nothing bad happens to you if you don't push the button. You're aware of those rules, of everything that's going on, so there's no confusion. I think that if you don't push it, that's an evil act, IMO.

It would have been even better if he had actually gotten around to talking about, you know, Fairfax India a bit. Ok, he mentioned HWIC's good track record in India, and the highish fees, and the fact that India may be a promising place to invest in general, but that's about it. This blog's M.O. is to basically be a sream-of-consciousness loosely centered around a topic. It wasn't really a writeup about Fairfax India, sorry for the disappointment.

Yes, welcome to the board!

Thank you, netnet.

http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/2017/05/fairfax-india-holdings-ffxdf.html (Also about a lot of other things... FFH equity hedges, reflexivity, valuations, etc)

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe Nice piece. Munger's phrase about ideology turning brains to cabbage is a subset of this cognitive bias.

No. Just no. Paying $40 per month is not a win for pet owner. Sorry. Maybe it is for people who throw money at pets as if they are family members, but it's not for a regular person. Sorry, if kitty gets cancer, it's not getting $5K procedure and it's not getting pet insurance. It is going to eternal hunting grounds where mice run slowly and bowl is always full of organic kibble. Not to say that he and FFH won't make tons of money on pet insurance. Cause there's tons of people who think that Fido is a family member and all that. It's a personal choice. There's no right or wrong answer, it's subjective. If you love your pet, insuring against it potentially dying because you don't have thousands on hand might make all the sense in the world and be a small price indeed compared to the alternative. Doesn't matter if you wouldn't do it if many others would, just like it doesn't matter if I wouldn't spend money on a luxury car or a fancy business suit if many others will. Maybe you love an artist and will spend hundreds to see them live but I think they're worthless and wouldn't pay a dime. We're both correct from our perspective. And I write this as a non-pet owner who can still see how many people feel deep attachment to their pets and want to take good care of their health. I literally spent like $3k getting rid of my cat's cancer a few months ago, and did it without a second thought. Animals mean a lot to me; they have always been there through feast and famine, and I will do what is in my power to make sure they have the treatment they need to live a happy life. He was growing cysts and some of them were cancerous and had to be removed. That 3K could have saved more than 10 cats who instead were killed because shelters don't have space. Yeah, attachments matter. And ethics is a harsh mistress ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem ) Meow. How many cats have you saved lately? 1 - 0 for Scott

No. Just no. Paying $40 per month is not a win for pet owner. Sorry. Maybe it is for people who throw money at pets as if they are family members, but it's not for a regular person. Sorry, if kitty gets cancer, it's not getting $5K procedure and it's not getting pet insurance. It is going to eternal hunting grounds where mice run slowly and bowl is always full of organic kibble. Not to say that he and FFH won't make tons of money on pet insurance. Cause there's tons of people who think that Fido is a family member and all that. It's a personal choice. There's no right or wrong answer, it's subjective. If you love your pet, insuring against it potentially dying because you don't have thousands on hand might make all the sense in the world and be a small price indeed compared to the alternative. Doesn't matter if you wouldn't do it if many others would, just like it doesn't matter if I wouldn't spend money on a luxury car or a fancy business suit if many others will. Maybe you love an artist and will spend hundreds to see them live but I think they're worthless and wouldn't pay a dime. We're both correct from our perspective. And I write this as a non-pet owner who can still see how many people feel deep attachment to their pets and want to take good care of their health.

Found this presentation he gave in 2012: http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/amzn-valuexvail-2012-josh-tarasoff1.pdf

No, it was the first time I heard of him. If anyone knows more, I'm also curious.

I thought this was an interesting interview about this investor's journey and his thought process about investing: https://www.ivey.uwo.ca/cmsmedia/3776019/tarasoff-bg-interview-2017.pdf (found it here: https://twitter.com/June_Street/status/859759108609757184)

If only I saw this 5 years or so ago... :'( I remember people talking about having bought the MA IPO, even more undervalued than the V one...

I'll raise you with: http://www.rocketfinancial.com/Charts.aspx?fID=3916&t=9 (I'm sure there's a strange business that has almost 100% FCF margin somewhere.. PSD.to in Canada used to have 70% FCF margins)

So back when I first created this thread, I reached out to RocketFinancial.com to show them the sankey charts and suggest that they might be a good addition to their service, and they apparently also liked them enough because over the next couple months they actually built the feature. You can see an example here: http://www.rocketfinancial.com/Charts.aspx?fID=4614&t=9 http://i.imgur.com/xBVxSap.png There's a menu to see it by geography, or by product or business. F.ex.: http://i.imgur.com/ADAr2Cg.png I've suggested to them that they could put percentage numbers on each branch of the sankey charts, I think that would make things easier to see at a glance. I like www.RocketFinancial.com in general. They have 20-year data on a lot of things. Check them out if you haven't already.

$1.1m in toronto:

That was the most interesting part to me. I wish I could just go to a CEO in the industry I'm looking at and ask them to explain to me what's most important, the market dynamics, what they think of each competitor, etc. could learn so much faster that way.

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/entertainment/los-angeles-celeb-homes-compare-toronto-1.4082052

Here's just the landing from a good angle: And check the stages separating and the lower stage turning around, from the ground camera! Some really nice photos here:

SpaceX just landed a falcon 9 this morning after launching a spy sat. This time the landing was on the ground, which I saw live on my phone (what a time to be alive!). Musk also recently did a TED talk where he talks about his Boring Company: