BenchRouter

> I think that life extension is dangerous and wrong and therefore people dedicating their lives to it today are unethical people.

> I haven't shut down any argument by saying this

You're being naive if you think that saying this doesn't end any hope of a reasonable discussion.

> It's a facts based argument and I'm the only one in this discussion so far that is actually using facts.

Your facts-based argument is that people in Detroit would move to Canada if the immigration policy was relaxed? I see no facts at all around that assertion, which is the one I was calling simplistic.

> What does bordering have to do with Canada's regressive immigration policies that prevent low skilled, low education persons from immigrating into the country?

You said (paraphrasing):

>> Why are there no hispanic people in Canada, relative to the US

I said:

>> Because it's not bordered by Mexico

(And, by the way, Mexico is the #1 source of immigrants for the US).

> The US isn't bordered by Pakistan, India, Vietnam, China, Philippines, or El Salvador. Six of the top 10 immigration countries for the US.

Out of those 6 countries, one would qualify as contributing to the Hispanic or Black population in the US (the groups we were discussing).

Out of the top 10, none are from countries in Africa or the Caribbean (which we might also consider to be a "black" population).

So we can agree then, that the US's diversity w.r.t. black people has nothing to do with immigration?

> See: population growth over time in Nevada, Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, etc. Silicon Valley exists precisely because the US works that way.

Those are also states that have heavy immigrant populations because they're attractive for skilled workers or close to natural entry points. You'll have to cite a source stating that the growth in those populations is from internal movement.

The US as a whole is fairly close to replacement rate births, so we would actually expect populations to remain stable.

> why do you believe this?

Because why say it otherwise? Facebook could've easily left all of that out and just said "Introducing messenger for kids! We're making sure it's carefully curated and safe for your children" etc. etc.

People would've speculated that it was being used for ads, sure, but it wouldn't have caused a major outrage. I'd bet significant sums of money that most (not all, obviously) parents don't really care about their children being advertised to or used for market research - I mean hell, TV was doing that way before FB was a thing. Most parents probably worry about more obvious things w.r.t. children chatting online: Bullying, talking to strangers, etc.

Saying "we're not scraping childrens' messages" and then turning around and doing exactly that would be such a monumental PR disaster if it ever came out. I don't think FB is quite that stupid. They're clearly focused on the long-term.

Another possibility is that they're actually just legally barred from scraping messages sent by children, and this is them putting a PR spin on "we're complying with the law!"

So basically, I just don't see a lot of benefit to promising not to scrape messages if they really want to do that.

> which is why Canada has so few hispanic and black people, and why it's nearly 80% white.

Er, or it's not bordered by Mexico and doesn't have nearly the extensive history with African slavery that the US does?

> Why don't more poor black people immigrate into Canada from cities like Detroit, Chicago or New York?

I'm not trying to argue one way or another for Canada's immigration system (I know very little about it), but this is a very simplistic argument.

Why don't all the ex-coal miners in WV simply move to where the jobs are?

Picking up and relocating your life is way, way more involved than you're making it sound.

> It's simple, they're not allowed to.

This is also the case in the US, hence the widespread fears about illegal immigrants.

If life was significantly better in Canada, one would expect far more illegal immigration.

I actually agree with you that this is "drug dealer" tactics but for totally different reasons. I think this is a classic "the first hit is free" move.

It's a long-term play. I believe FB when they say they won't show ads to kids, or use their chats for ad scraping. What they really want is for those kids to become so familiar and dependent on the system (FB), that they naturally transition to being active FB users as adults.

It's not a secret that FB has a perceived "uncool with kids" problem - hence the rise of things like Snapchat. If you hook them when they're really young, though, then FB just becomes an unquestioned part of life.

As far as the tool itself, i dunno - I mean messenger tools have been a fact of life for quite some time now. AIM, ICQ, etc. I don't think FB messenger is particularly different other than the fact that it's attached to, well, FB.

Ehhh not expensive if you go out to, say, Brownsville. Brooklyn is much, much more than just Williamsburg and Park Slope.

Yeah, I mean it's easy to forget about places in NY with low costs of living like Binghamton.

Even in the city, it's easy to forget that most people don't live in Manhattan/the expensive parts of Queens and Brooklyn. A sizable minority, sure, but not most.

I'm not sure I buy that attorneys are significantly better educated, especially in some more traditional firms (e.g. MS) where a masters isn't unusual. It's only an additional year of schooling on top of that.

Fair point on the licensing though. Maybe that's what most commonly separates blue collar from white collar these days - licensing? Trying to think of other professions I would compare software development to, and they all require licenses (traditional engineering, for example).

> Maybe I'm just getting jaded but I'd say yes. Outside the big 4 and a few other niches, most developers seem to just be gluing together whichever pre-made web frameworks and libraries happen to currently be in vogue. Patience with the endless yak-shaving needed to get anything to work rather than any particular technical brilliance is the primary requirement for career longevity.

Yeah, I'm starting to get that impression as well.

To be fair, though, I think many US physicians would tell you a similar thing (being brilliant isn't nearly as important as how adept you are at navigating the healthcare/insurance system).

> My guess is that the popularity of these professions is that they are all relatively low-qualified ones suitable to people working while studying or "filling gaps" before getting a "good job" in IT.

Yeah, I mean I don't doubt that's why they show up frequently. It's more like: In a discussion about attorney/physician burnout, I don't often see people say "well you think being an attorney is hard? Try construction..."

The discussion in that case would be something more like, "if you don't like being an attorney go be an accountant" - something like that, if that makes any sense.

> It could be, but I doubt that there are many people that after having invested in an education in either law or medicine and actually had a suitable job in those professions left them to become a full-time programmer, particularly an employed full-time programmer.

I see what you're saying, but my point was more like: Shouldn't we be comparing software development to those professions? As in, "software development is incredibly easy compared to being an attorney"?

> Since every other guy here seems to be well in the hundred of thousands US$/year or more, I would say, if this is the case, "exceptionally well paid plumbers/electricians".

I thought that was becoming more and more common in those professions (electricians especially seem to be well compensated)?

Yeah, and I think that's the interesting divide to me: I did receive a formal education, and even a Master's, in CS.

Despite that, there's very little difference between myself and another developer who has no formal education at all.

I guess I always thought of myself as a white-collar worker because of that, and this whole discussion is making me re-evaluate that. Not that the distinction is super important obviously, or that I think of myself as "better than", but I always thought of my peers as attorneys and people in finance, not construction workers.

> Most people have way more taxing jobs than IT. I've been in construction for 3 years, and that work is no joke.

There's some discussion of this above, but I think it's interesting that the alternative to software development is seemingly always construction, or delivering food, or being a waiter.

Wouldn't the more apt comparison be something like law? Or medicine?

Or has software development truly reached blue-collar status and we're essentially plumbers/electricians?

I'm not accusing you of anything specifically, just using your comment to ponder.

Er, those are both insanely large industries with untold amounts of money flowing through them (well, radio not so much but in its heyday).

If FB is an industry on the level of TV or radio, then it's almost certainly not overvalued.

> It is seriously gross that a tax reform bill that is by basically all accounts enormously, even proudly regressive is being sold to tech nerds with a marginal improvement in stock options accounting.

As with all things, worth remembering who's writing this: Fred Wilson is an extremely wealthy venture capitalist. He stands to benefit a great deal from provisions like the repeal of the estate tax.