Does anyone else hate the long tail? Most of the content I consume comes from the long tail. The content itself is interesting and great. I love it. However, consuming long tail content feels like another step along the path towards social isolation. Like I can never talk about or share the things I enjoy with others because the chance of them also having enjoyed these things is near-0. And of course, you can recommend your long tail content to others, but everyone is always recommending long tail content to each other. It's a bit much to keep up with. I feel somewhat envious of the days when, for instance, everyone in the country listened to The White Album or Dark Side of the Moon and could enjoy it together.
All measurement, but especially so at the quantum scale, involves interacting with the observed subject. One of the observations made by quantum mechanics is that you can't observe a system without interacting / altering it in some way.
To give you a macroscopic example, the way you detect the color of an object is to apply electromagnetic radiation in the visible light spectrum to the object and see which wavelengths are absorbed and reflected. The process of absorption and reflection is a physical interaction with the object you're looking at.
Crypto firms aren’t systematically important, so no bailout is necessary or warranted. This is more like the .com bust than anything else. In both cases, irrational exuberance surrounding unsound companies quickly vanished.
No one’s 401k was plundered. Most of this was funded by the Federal Reserve via a combination of quantitative easing, low interest rates, and increasing the money supply. The Fed created the perfect environment for runaway speculation.
It's always a bit terrifying to me how often I see people on Hacker News confidently asserting some phenomenon can be explained by something that any rational person would recognize as non-nonsensical.
Really? An entire Wikipedia article filled with detailed explanation of the phenomenon and its cause is an appeal to the stone? Really? Sorry, but that is absurd.
> That won't put the water back. Revenge is just the final form of prioritizing the comfort (or discomfort) of a handful of bad actors over the well-being of the other 99.9999% of the world.
Punishing the perpetrators won’t put the water back in the same way punishing a murderer won’t bring the victim back. We don’t punish to make right. We punish to deter.
it might be that you get punished despite trying to live properly as you claim in 2).
Punishment doesn't work in this context, since it's not a repeated game. Murder is punished because everyone has the chance to do murder - it's a "repeated" game. Destroying the environment isn't.
Destroying various environmental resources is completely a repeated game (for example, look at superfund sites).
If in the future it's decided that I made my money unethically and it needs to be redistributed, I guess I'm fine with that so long as the same standard is applied to everyone's money. I think it'll be close to a great reset, but whatever. I'm not thrilled by the idea, but it might have to happen.
Punishment is not a sustainable measure, it only fosters more bad motives, and rules used to justify the punishment inform malicious actors on how to not get caught (a.k.a. how to follow the letter but not the spirit).
To address the root cause, work out why bad motives exist (what compels people to violate the spirit in the first place) and eliminate those.
I agree that punishment != punishment, and there seem to be many cases where evidence of intentional harm appears to be substantial enough that the majority would support if something was done about it legally, yet unfortunately nothing is done. That aside, I still doubt it would be a fundamental deterrent (it’ll deter some from doing this particular thing, but they’ll find another workaround).
If the powerful bear consequences when something bad happens regardless of fault, then power will be wielded to prevent those outcomes rather than enact them. Anyone who does not wish to take that risk can dispose of their power.
There’s a hint of the idea that “power should be exceedingly inconvenient, not lucrative, and attract people who ‘irrationally’ want to make the world better as opposed to abusing it”, which I don’t disagree with.
However, there’s another big concept, and that is “do not fire an employee who just learned a big and expensive, to you, lesson”. Punishing people simply because they failed, especially in a complex environment with slow onboarding process, is unproductive.
Furthermore, it can sow fear, resentment and distrust. Take China, where a local official risks unpredictable punishment, up to losing their job (or worse), if they fail—such as by allowing COVID cases to happen in their locality. Unfortunately, the side-effect of it is that officials are incentivized to lie up, meaning the government may think the country is COVID-free and be unable to make informed decisions.
This is also why I think COVID lab leak event, if confirmed, should not lead to any repercussions for China in particular. Fear of said repercussions seems likely half of the reason the research is being obscured in the first place, as a result preventing the global community from making informed decisions.
So, if you don’t want such shenanigans to take place in your government (I wouldn’t), you have to agree that whichever human being you elected should be able to make mistakes to learn from them, and thus another measure of their performance should be used.
For example, repeat trend of malicious intent supported by concrete evidence could be a good one.
(And to be make things even trickier, they do not deserve the whole credit in case of any success either. The success or failure of a measure to large extent depends on the whole country and the larger context it exists in. There are situations where one can only win, and situations where losing the least is the best outcome.)
Incentives should be aligned, but I don’t think punishment is the instrument for that.
I agree with your perspectives with regard to civil servants, but the people with power I was referring to are the wealthy.
No state actor (other than arguably putin, but I'd characterise his power as individual and not derived from his role as a government agent) is as powerful as eg. rupert murdoch or peter thiel individually, and in aggregate (and in spite of not working together) the 0.01% are vastly more powerful than any state.
If 10% of the fortune 500 were confiscated and redistributed equally every time there's a pandemic or 5% of the amazon is burnt down or there is an unchecked oil spill, then the wealthy would ensure these things do not happen.
Yeah, somehow I mistakenly read your “powerful” to mean elected government.
I suppose the main thing that makes rich powerful is the ability to influence government, which is only because power converts to money. If elected officials could not be influenced by rich malicious actors, those actors would lose much leverage.
The second thing is the ability to use money to secure popular support, which can hardly be eliminated unless people stop putting personal gain above true value… which is realistic in post-scarcity.
If you have power and are wielding it to make things worse in order to gain more power, then yes. Stripping you of all of your power later is morally and strategically right.
Are you suggesting the farmers are criminal? Unless they subverted the democratic institutions to benefit from bedrock water, punishing them IS the crime.
You're right about executives of large firms, but you're wrong about farmers. Focusing on punishment for random small powerless people, most of whom are not still alive, while not assassinating every billionaire is what they want you to do.
It really depends on the specific situation. Public space is for everyone’s enjoyment. Unfortunately, some people take advantage of their right to the space in a way that detracts from everyone. Take a park for example. Typically, a great place to take your kids. However, if someone strung out on heroin loiters in the park, it suddenly becomes a much worse place for everyone else. Technically, being high on heroin in a public place isn’t a crime. This person is well within their rights to use the public space. But in many cases, people like this form a small minority that ruins the public space for everyone. Discouraging this type of person is actually maximizing the utility of public space.
> Technically, being high on heroin in a public place isn’t a crime.
That's hard to believe. If it's apparent to anyone else, it will be a crime in a few different ways. For example:
> A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he or she:
> (1) Engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior; [or]
> (2) Makes unreasonable noise or offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display, or addresses abusive language to any person present
Do you really think people stung out on heroin do so "with purpose to cause public inconvenience"?
That said, chances are most jurisdictions have some variation of "dunk in public" that isn't as particular about the intoxicant. Even so, the criminal justice system hasn't proven itself to be an especially good solution to substance abusers.
> Do you really think people st[r]ung out on heroin do so "with purpose to cause public inconvenience"?
No, but as you'll note that is not an element of the crime. It suffices to act in a way that "recklessly creates a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm".
Well, sure, if you can't read more than 14 words in one sitting. But for everyone capable of reading entire sentences at once.. no, that's not the language of the statute, you would have to be intentionally misreading it to make that statement.
Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re seeing. The law says “purpose to cause” and then lists two things joined by an OR clause. But you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading. Can you break it down for me?
If people here, in a place where many people write logic for a living, cannot parse simple logic out of a statue, imagine how a judge or a jury would do it.
I feel like often people in criminal justice do not understand meaning or intent of a statue and wing it, often slanting towards the side of punishing defendants. The law doesn't matter when your goal is to lock people up.
Maybe… however in the debate of this law, one side is saying “the law says you need purpose to cause” and the other side is saying “no it doesn’t. If you could read more than 14 words you would know that.”
I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter.
> however in the debate of this law, one side is saying “the law says you need purpose to cause” and the other side is saying “no it doesn’t. If you could read more than 14 words you would know that.”
> I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter
Now, I decided not spend more time and money on law school about half way through when I decided I’d rather stay in technology, but I don't see how anyone can argue with a straight face that the mental state requirement “with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof” (emphasis added) fails to apply to people recklessly causing a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm just as much a to those acting with purpose to cause such inconvenience, annoyance, and alarm.
> I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter.
I like to think that an objective observer might read the statute before deciding which argument he thought was more compelling. Certainly a lawyer would.
> you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading.
Does it alarm you at all that the responses you're getting consist of (1) the suggestion that you're not able to read past the 14th word in a sentence, and (2) the observation "I don't see how anyone could say that with a straight face"?
> Can you break it down for me?
The statute is written very clearly on this point. It states two requirements for the offense to be committed; there is a state-of-mind requirement and an actual-conduct requirement. Both elements must be satisfied.
The actual-conduct requirement is satisfied by any one of three prongs (of which I quoted only the first two, because I didn't think there was a reasonable argument that public heroin use might satisfy the third). There appears to be very little dispute about its structure.
The state-of-mind requirement is satisfied by any one of two prongs. It states:
> A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with purpose to cause public inconvenience, [14] annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he or she...
For your convenience, I've marked the position following the 14th word in the sentence. Your argumentation so far has relied very heavily on pretending the words following that position do not exist. But they do.
Continuing from that point, we see that "public inconvenience" is not part of the necessary state of mind. Someone who intends to commit disorderly conduct may also do so with the purpose to cause public annoyance or public alarm. And more importantly, there is no intentionality requirement at all; the necessary state of mind is possessed by anyone "recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm". This prong is obviously satisfied by anyone who is high on heroin in public.
We can represent the structure of the statute very easily in Python-like pseudocode:
if ( defendant.intended_public_alarm()
or
defendant.recklessly_risked_public_alarm() )
and
defendant.actually_caused_public_alarm() ):
# the offense has been committed; check whether it's a
# violation or a misdemeanor
You're arguing that whenever intended_public_alarm returns False, the overall statement will also evaluate to False, which suggests a very alarming inability to understand Boolean logic. Or, of course, an inability to see words that occur after the 14th position in a sentence. But there is no good-faith reading of the statute that could be argued to support your view.
Do you seriously intend to argue that the state-of-mind element is meant to include these four categories?
1. People with the purpose to cause public inconvenience;
2. People with the purpose to cause public annoyance;
3. People with the purpose to cause public alarm;
4. People with the purpose to recklessly creating a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm.
And that, leaving aside the gross ungrammaticality of category 4, the four categories were strung together in parallel in a list with the structure "a, b or c or d"?
I think a guy on heroin in a park could easily not be noticed. This exact scenario happens harmlessly in major cities. You're overestimating the danger of happening to be in the same park as that person.
> It really depends on the specific situation. Public space is for everyone’s enjoyment. Unfortunately, some people take advantage of their right to the space in a way that detracts from everyone. Take a park for example. Typically, a great place to take your kids. However, if someone $PROPERTY loiters in the park, it suddenly becomes a much worse place for everyone else. Technically, being $PROPERTY in a public place isn’t a crime. This person is well within their rights to use the public space. But in many cases, people like this form a small minority that ruins the public space for everyone. Discouraging this type of person is actually maximizing the utility of public space.
Yeah, in my country of origin exactly this rhetoric is used against every minority, from gay people to disabled people. Yeah, they intentionally make places _inaccessible_ for disabled and push autistic children out of schools.
If you remove a vehicle lane then traffic is reduced. Pull up the sidewalks and loitering pedestrians disappear. Remove the parks and there will be fewer people sleeping in parks. Under-inclusive metrics generally lead to poor decisions.
I would really prefer to humanize those people and develop systems in place so they can find the help they need, rather than having sleeping in what is probably the safest possible place they have access to, from a personal safety standpoint.
If it makes you feel better about your own society that society would rather hide its flaws from public view than actually solve them, find solace in the fact that the blight and detritus you identify would also be solved if those people were given the treatment they deserve.
That's just color commentary from the author of this piece. If you read the rest of the article, the specific changes proposed by the SEC are outlined.
No, they are not. It just outlines potential things they could examine. None of which are practical, and none of which are likely to move forward.
Payment for order flow isn't actually the problem, large institutions not having, or willing ,to part with the margin collateral was. PFOF is just the gas they put in front to hide the real issue, and it's a real good one because removing it also hurts retail investors, making it unlikely to change much.
In the end, They will likely just put some rules in requiring these apps to more 'carefully educate thier customers on the risk of PFOF', basically continuing to protect the institution while insulting little retail investors as being too stupid for not reading the TOS carefully enough.
Your outrage is unwarranted. The proposed changes are:
1) Limiting PFOF because it creates possible conflicts of interest.
2) Limiting "gamification" of trading via engagement prompts.
3) Adding sub-penny prices to exchanges to harmonize them with market makers. This is to encourage more orders to be sent to exchanges instead of market makers.
How are any of these things capitulating to institutional investors?
I think a very legitimate, legal purpose of the technology is for the implementation of financial systems. How many billions of dollars of computers, networks, mainframes, and engineers are dedicate to running the financial system? Distributed ledgers are basically an abstraction for implementing financial systems. Think about them as C for the financial system, where the current financial system is assembly. The doesn't mean public, decentralized blockchains are the answer the any particular problem, but blockchain technology can be useful even if they exist mostly as private chains run by financial institutions.
