chrismanfrank

Yes, this is the source of the disagreement. Silver, I think, probably gets the math. But his aim is to entertain.

Taleb's aim is something like predictive rigor. God knows why he cares about Silver. I think everyone gets that Silver is doing entertainment.

You basically have it right.

But it's not a misunderstanding. Taleb understands Silver's approach, but thinks it's BS, entertainment not forecasting.

He's right, but I don't know why he cares. The problem isn't that Silver doesn't know math, it's that his goal is to entertain, not predict.

I got what the article was saying. The point just makes no sense to me. Amazon got $2.4B in subsidies. To say, "it's unethical to ask for that" is functionally equivalent to saying "the only ethical thing is for Amazon to donate $2.4B to the cities."

And if the argument is Amazon shouldn't take the subsidies because it's bad PR, well you'll have to weigh the cost of that bad PR against the $2.4B savings they've negotiated for themselves.

You assume it's a "bad" deal. But Amazon says they'll spend $5B on construction costs and upwards of $5B per year paying their employees for years and years to come. Seems like a smart deal for the city on the face, assuming maximizing tax revenue is a goal.

Am I alone in not seeing the problem here? Cities went into this with their eyes open, no? It was a bidding war to attract a major employer to the city.

Amazon's employees will pay taxes, buy property, and spend money, all of which enrich the local economy and government. That's why they're willing to offer tax breaks.

Any subsidies Amazon could have received from a city, but chose not to would amount to a gift to the city. Why would they do this? City governments are not the first place I would think of when giving to charity.

Well now you've raised a very deep point. We need some laws and regulation, but not too much. How do we decide? We have a Constitution and a political system, including judiciary where we can all fight it out.

Conservatives are more on the side of limited government power. Progressives think the government should do more. And on and on it goes...

> You see that as a dystopia. I see that as a better political and social environment.

The question then is...should YOU be the one to decide what is "better"? Who should be given that kind of power?

In an ideal world, a benevolent philosopher king would have that power. In the real world, maybe it's best no one has it.

Maybe it's better to cast the ring into the fire.

"Of course the poorest people are more likely to gain in income -- when you start at the bottom, there's really only one direction you can go."

But doesn't this claim in itself refute the thesis that all the income gains are going to the top? If we find people at the bottom gaining income far faster than people at the top, which is what my quote claims, isn't that evidence that we live in a just society, not an unjust one?

From the article: "The study looks at people who were 35–40 in 1987 and then looks at how they were doing 20 years later, when they are 55–60. The median income of the people in the top 20% in 1987 ended up 5% lower twenty years later. The people in the middle 20% ended up with median income that was 27% higher. And if you started in the bottom 20%, your income doubled. If you were in the top 1% in 1987, 20 years later, median income was 29% lower."

I just subscribed to HBO through Amazon for this reason. It's really great. Amazon user experience and streaming capabilities seem better than HBO. But HBO is the only place you can get Game of Thrones. Win-win :)

Fixed mindset is the belief that qualities like intelligence are fixed and can't change. Growth mindset is the belief that these qualities can be grown through effort.

Dwecks research shows that a) kids with a growth mindset do better in school, especially in math, and b) kids can learn to have a growth mindset through relatively small interventions like reading and discussing a short article about the brain.

I think point a) is obvious, but point b) was not until Dwecks research.

Thanks for posting this. Seriously funny.

I love it. I go the movies all the time. I wish you had a way for me to put my email address in so I could get an email every Friday to remind me this site exists. Cool idea and implementation. Keep going!