I'm genuinely curious, and I know this can get political quickly, but I mean this in good faith. The wealth that people like Bezos or Musk have—did it only come into existence because they created their companies? In other words, if they had never been born or chosen a different path, their wealth wouldn't simply be redistributed among others, right? The world would just have less overall wealth, roughly equal to their net worth. Is that correct?
I have an iPad and use notability for this. I have a 350 page note that's filled with to-dos, doodles, screenshots of quotes, etc. I love being able to just scroll up endlessly to see what I was thinking about or working on, all in chronological order.
I started learning to code this year, and I keep thinking that I would have thrown in the towel if not for ChatGPT. For better or for worse.
The big difference for me is being able to struggle right up until I'm ready to give up, and then ask ChatGPT for insight. Usually my issue is a syntax one, and I have the concepts down (i.e. I was right to solve it using nested if statements, but I forgot I need to put a variable outside a function, for example). This way I get that dopamine hit of being mostly right, and quick feedback on what I need to improve. If not for ChatGPT, I'd be left feeling like I just failed entirely and I'm not getting it at all, which I don't think is the case.
I think the same experience would be achieved with a good teacher, but then I'd need my schedule to overlap, and the feedback on problems would still be often be delayed instead of instant.
I second this recommendation. It's a wonderful book. There are many fascinating tidbits in here that makes you really appreciate the importance of being able manipulate materials with precision. It's easy to take this for granted today, but it's critical to basically every technology we enjoy.
I agree. I happen to sell the same things on my (pretty good!) Shopify store as well as on Amazon. Amazon outsells about 2000:1. The reason why is simple -- it's traffic. If you can get traffic on your own, say with a giant social following or TV presence, then owning your platform probably does make sense. Otherwise go to where your customers are. It's like the old retailers' saying: "Location, Location, Location."
I second this. It's really stunning what you can learn by logging an hour or two a day. I really like to add Anki to my daily practice routine. I take advantage of screenshotting and jot my notes in Anki in a questions/answer format instead of in a notebook. It's great for learning the core concepts or vocabulary of a new skill.
Zoom in on a small section of sky and toggle between James and Hubble. James reveals many additional galaxy in each tiny slice of image. Probably hundreds or more in that one image alone.
I don’t disagree with your point, but I think it doesn’t take the following in to account: Wealth is not a fixed sum. The global GDP increases over time, which I interpret has new wealth being created. If Elon hadn’t created his businesses, his wealth wouldn’t be in the hands of other people, it just wouldn’t exist.
I’ve been focused on mechanical building the last 2 years. I learned Solidworks, Blender, 3d printing, cnc, and resin casting. Now I am taking woodshop, and trying to learn more about mechanism design. Learning more about materials is always ongoing in the background. My goal is to be able prototype whatever zainy physical product idea I might have quickly and at a high quality.
Are you sure your account is accurate? According to the Forbes article below, bidding at the end of the auction closed with a high bid of approx. $270. Since the auction closed people have made additional offers, the highest so far is $29k (which is a 99% drop in value).
I think I found the Open Seas page (lots of scam looking clones of the page, so I'm not sure this is the real one), but unfortunately the interface doesn't give much information on what activities around the NFT have occurred. At least to a lay person like myself.
For sure, you're right. I'm talking about base rates. The curve of human
experience has shifted dramatically in a positive direction over time. So if a genie said to your unborn self, pick and era to be born into and I'll randomly assign you a person from the era, you'd be crazy to choose any time but now.
I think Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now made a compelling case that the world now has basically never been better. You'd be crazy to wish be born in to any other time period. I find that comforting. There's good reasons to be glad you weren't born in the past, and the same reasons to be hopeful for the future.
Perhaps that's not comforting if you're suffering. But if the cause of your suffering is that you think the world is awful, give that book a read. Pinker does a good job of breaking that sentiment down in to chunks (exactly what part is awful?) and exploring those questions.
Personally, I do think that a lot of the "world is awful and broken right now" sentiment is a bit detached from the reality. Which is great news! Anyways, I'm not trying to come at you at all, just be helpful and challenge assumptions.