SBF is despicable but I have no sympathy for his victims. 99.9% of FTX users were motivated by greed: speculation, tax evasion or illicit deals.
Greedy people stolen by a greedier one: I don't care but I appreciate the irony.
Life savings? Well, you lost them at an online casino. I'd prefer that you get it back but I won't weep if you don't. Greed leads to terrible situations.
Frankly, there are good people who are every day true victims to care for. Greedy gamblers, tax evaders and traffickers are not among them.
My understanding is that Julius Caesar could have lost that war but there is little chance that Rome wouldn't have submitted Gaul in the end.
Current Spain and Portugal's territory required from Rome no less than 190 years of wars. Romans kept going on submitting a few tribes there every year for two centuries.
A sort of "proof" of this assertion is that Rome, in the end, conquered all territories around the Mediterranean Sea and far beyond. Of course, the course of events are by nature unpredictable but I find it reasonable tosay that the odds for a long term victory of Gaul were slim.
However, but that was much earlier, the two Punic wars against Carthage were much more existential threats to Rome.
The author wants the scientists to be involved in the coming COP27, as if they were not already. As if no technical anf scientific solutions had been provided to climate change!
Plenty of solutions have been found already. We absolutely know how to resolve this issue on the technical aspects ; this doesn't mean that no research and development is needed: we can and will come up with even better solutions.
But we already have the solutions. No technical challenge here, just a political challenge: decide how to share the costs.
Because we are lazy and don't understand what game theory tells us about the current stand-still. This is a game where each country would benefit the most if it succeeds doing the least - as long as the others do enough.
Hence the need for a political COP27: the only issue is to find a consensus and start acting promptly at the required scale (which is a big one, but much smaller than WWII for example on the economic side).
Geo-engineering is a quest for the silver bullet.
As if technology had ever provided a solution to a political issue... It hasn't. When it looks like it has, it's always because the policies are embbeded into the technogly: cf "code is law" for example.
Despite his dubious past, the billionaire John Arnold has focused time and money to amend scientific research. I've read maybe 2 years ago about that endeavor and followed him on Twitter ; I found it quite interesting and original. For example, he offers researchers to save their initial data (before any screening) so that other researchers can check which cases were thrown out of the study. He also funded reproduction tests. I haven't followed since, so I hope he kept on doing good work.
Without going to extreme extents, many of us can lead a more sober life: no plane trip, less meat, insulate the house, avoid fossil fuels on favor of electricity and choose an electricity provider selling only energy produced by renewable ways (no "compensation" or other BS greenwashing). Avoid buying plastic. Choose strongly build appliances ; repair rather than buy. My phone is a 6 year old Samsung under LineageOS so it runs Android 10: good enough and not slow at all.
=> I'm moving at my own pace toward a more sober life, without the guilt of not doing enough. I'm not at all having an austere way of life, just slowly getting rid of the habit of finding joy in buying new stuff. Except what I really appreciate: books, good food, technological product that I really own, that I can hack and repair.
But I totally refuse the self-righteous path of the neo-puritanism that some ecologists promote: as you said, my actions are limited. I'm transitioning to a more sober life, not punishing myself. By the way, many people are just not in an economic situation to, for example, avoid long car commute. But we can all renounce taking planes, at least for vacations. I miss diving in the Red Sea. And I'll never dive in the Philippines nor visit New Zealand. It sucks but at least I know I do more than many - without tying to be perfect.
Once that said, the thing we can do is ... to build a group (friends, family, but most mostly like-minded people) and take responsibility for a piece of land. I'm fundraising to buy a forest of 1 km2 . The idea is to make what his necessary so that this forest will be thriving in 2100 - whatever the climate change. The climate changes too fast for the forest to adapt by itself. We'll need to plant more adapted species.
For the years to come, we are mostly learning since none of us has a clue of what to do. We know that we first need to learn (in books, moocs) and spend a lot of time observing how that parcel evolves by itself. We'll take advice from experts, visit other projects of the sort etc. Then make super small steps to help this small forest transition to the new climate.
That's how we imagine to really reconnect with Nature. We don't have financial gains in sight but the project is not a project of non-humane intervention or forbidding by principle some exploitation. The human beings must - in our view - learn to exploit Nature respectfully: all the species, from insects to birds and bigger animals must thrive. But we will hunt a bit, for our consumption but mainly because it's necessary over here to protect the local farmers' crops. We may also timber a bit, not for sale, nor to heat our houses but to build a few tiny houses over the years. To learn to build a truly sustainable way of life. Sober but comfortable enough, self-sufficient if possible (food aside, we buy food to local organic farms).
Anyway, the priority is the vitality of the forest, not us. But we want to learn how to live in a way that matches with the Nature's needs. We'll try to limit our interventions as much as possible. Especially in the first five years, where we don't plan to act at all, just observe and learn to see.
So I agree, we can't do much to save the world. But we can take responsibility for one particular parcel of Nature, big or small. Let it live, observe and act very cautiously to help it overcome the climate change. Many forests will turn to savannahs if we don't try to plant species to replace those that can't bear droughts and then sudden floods. Some species need a cold winter otherwise their biological clock is lost. They don't cope with the current "warm" winters.
But finding the right species to plant without provoking unexpected side effects is super super difficult. So that's a huge responsibility. Only local people devoting time and love can do this. If it's not us, that parcel of forest will either be cut for wood or be a savannah or yet another commercial zone and its parking lots. A local farmer may also buy it, cut it and grow whatever Monsanto seeds resisting to Monsanto pesticides.
In 2060 or 2100, when the climate and biodiversity situation will become unbearable, our small project will be there, an open-book of what works and what doesn't, in this particular area with its specific soils and specific local climate. We plan to document a lot the experience, so it can be reproduced in the area at least.
Let's not wait for governments and societies to act in time. Let's be the avant-guarde, by nature small groups with obscure projects ridiculed by the mass.
Taking care of a parcel of Nature can't be wrong. Learning how Nature works and how we can cautiously help it adapt can't be wrong. It"s like educating our children into decent human beings: it can't be wrong whatever the society turns into.
The link between monetary inflation and price inflation has been "demonstrated" by the Chicago Boys, with Milton Friedman as their guru. It led to the "monetarist" school of thought - which has been the reigning paradigm in economics since.
There is no such thing as "inflation" in general.
There are different types of inflation, such as the rise of the valuations of stocks, the rise of real estate price and day-to-day prices such as food. And monetary inflation.
QE has led to various effects in various countries at different times. There is no absolute correlation "always and everywhere".
The funny thing is that a rise in stock market is always interpreted as a positive thing - despite everybody knowing that bubbles happen very regularly.
Otherwise, inflation is seen as bad - which is ridiculous since the extraordinary low interest rates kept by the FED for years ("printing money") has sustained the economic growth and avoided recession.
Economists are historians of the economy. They are able to explain what happened - and if they agree on the general picture, they disagree on many points. Which is normal, that is a research field, so there are debates.
Some say lessons should be learned from History... well, for sure, all other things being equal, stuff tend to repeat, but as time goes by, the other things are not equal at all - or only to a certain point.
I majored in History but historians are not my first sources to predict the future. Despite having repeatedly failed at predicting anything, we can't help but ask economists to be oracles and ask them to set-up policies.
Or maybe we don't care much about what happens in our jails. As if being raped in jail was part of the sentence. Note that rape is only the extreme form of the violence that inmates, mostly males, endure.
I can't see where the suffering of men would be silenced because of their gender.
On the contrary, at last, more and more often men express their suffering, which is great because the "silent strong" man used to be the reference. Men as warriors don't ever complain etc.
There are more and more often in the news men stating their feelings: veterans with PTSD, Johnny Depp courageously telling how he has been abused by his partner, men denouncing being on verge of burning-out at work etc.
As a man, I consider that yes, there is still plenty of men suffering in silence. And that needs to come out. The more men are able to get over the silent strong man figure - John Wayne! - inherited from the past, the more the media will talk about it.
Nobody is silencing the suffering of men ; the men need to reconnect with their feelings and learn to express them. Most women are more able to express their feelings and they are indeed "silenced" - even if less and less so.
An example? The "mental load". In many modern heterosexual couples, the woman is still in charge of the general on-going of the home, and the man goes to work without that load. When he comes home, he waits to be asked or just does the minimum.
If you have ever been in charge of a project at work and your colleagues are only participants, you know very well the difference. Being in charge of the general coordination, ensure that everything is done when required, is quite a load.
This reflects the abnormally high proportion of people jailed in the USA:
- 80K inmates for 68.5M inhabitants in the UK => 0.12%
- 1,215K inmates for 331M inhabitants in the US => 0,37%
There are therefore around 3 times more people incarcerated in the US than in UK, proportionally.
As rapes are very frequent in the US jails (as this terrible report points out) and most of the jail population are men, then indeed, what can conclude that - statistically speaking - that most rape victims are men.
But if you take apart the population in jail, most rape victims are women.
Of course, one can argue that prisoners are human beings like others: they are.
But the gendered statistic on rape is turned upside-down by the totally abnormal proportion of people in jail in the US, when compared to comparable countries, PLUS the totally despicable jail system where rapes are numerous.
Note that rapes are very common as well in jails of comparable countries. I have no information about this, but I can't see why rapes would be more frequent in American jails rather than British jails - all others things being equal. But maybe the US jail system and/or the US jail population may lead to more (or less, why not) rapes: I have no clue about this.
I'm not saying that they are in jail for no reason, but that the US society is ... dysfunctional. That analysis may appear outrageous in the US, but it is something obvious to many other countries.
But from saying "dysfunctional" to point out why it is so, there is a huge leap where political inclinations are bound to express themselves. In this case, these are not biases, because politics is precisely about how we live together in a society. And indeed, people don't live in the same world, in the sense that their interpretative frameworks are so diverse.
That's why I find the formulation of that figure problematic. I would find it less click-bait-y and trolly to say: "Rapes of men in the US jails are incredibly numerous" - maybe adding "to the point of outnumbering the rapes of women".
Why is it problematic? Because it echoes a large incel, masculinust, far-right discourse against feminism. Each time women (and "woke" men, to use their vocabulary) denounce something, there are always troves of righteous men pretending that the issue is true for all sexes alike (since in their views, sex and gender are the same thing).
The formulation "Most rapes victims in the United States are men" is a way of saying that all genders are equally victims of rapes in general. But they are not. In the world, and probably in all countries except the US, rape victims are overwhelmingly women and girls. The US exception is not related to a gender equality but to the abnormal rate of incarceration.
I don't know if there was an intention in the formulation or not. Maybe not, so I'm not at all in an accusatory mode. I'm just saying that this formulation offers ground to misinterpretation.
Always the same arguments are used to justify invasion of privacy by governments: terrorism, pedo-pornography, human trafficking for sex (especially children).
Which are solid arguments but of course those laws are in 95% of the cases used for everything but the 3 reasonable causes mentioned.
Moreover, most of the time, the law grants access to police without decision by a judge, in the name of efficiency. In France, the proposal to trace what information is accessed by each policewoman or policeman has been rejected. So the misuses of the police databases are daily occurrences with total immunity.
Who knows what are the misuses of NSA databases in the US. I don't know at least but I don't think the Americans' privacy is an issue among NSA staff, nor for Congress. I may be totally wrong and would be happy to be enlightened on the matter.
I guess you mean "we all know that almost no current government has the political courage to do what is necessary so that we decarbonize in time".
Or " we all know that we don't have the fortitude to do to do what is necessary so that we decarbonize in time".
=> that version is better if governments do what their public opinion is willing to do.
To fight in the WWI and WII, the most advanced economies of those times turned in less than two years into war economies, where more than 50% of the GDP was directed to the war effort.
True for Germany, France, the UK plus, for WWII, the USA, the USSR, Japan.
The Apollo program amounted during the 60s to 4% of the US GDP, just for the political sake of keeping up with the USSR.
If we considered - as we should - the dereliction of climate and the on-going massive reduction of biodiversity as an existential threat, we would act accordingly.
We can decarbonize in time. But we don't want to "look up", e.g. to listen to the Science.
Australia is having huge fires and large floods every year now - but still elect a government in denial of the causes.
In the USA, the natural disasters are rising sharply in frequency and magnitude (current drought in the West, hurricanes etc).
Etc etc.
When it will become unbearable, we will at last act accordingly. The solutions are there already.
There are many breakthroughs (batteries for example, to store surplus of renewables energies so that it can be used at will when necessary). Far many more would occur if we invested money in research and R&D.
We ought not to bet on a hypothetical magic bullet. Not that we shouldn't fund those research. Startups with small odds to succeeded easily raise VC money since a success would offer a huge ROI.
But the trap is to bet the future of the world on a hypothetical magic bullet when the solutions already exist. We just don't want to do what necessary to implement them.
The USA, Canada, Australia for example emit 3 times more CO2 than France per inhabitant. However, the loss of biodiversity is as fast (and maybe higher) in France (which governments do very little to tackle gashouse emissions).
I don't know, really. You may be right but he's smart and very familiar with Twitter practices so despite the apparent no self-restraint, maybe he knows how to stay on the edge?
So I guess we'll see if the tone of his tweets changes when he's really in possession of Twitter. We'll know then for sure.
A big thank you! This is an amazing list of things to look into and keep in mind. Many points are obscure to me, but I'm going to print this and keep it at hand. Thanks again.
I'm open to discussion of course, but I'd more a more argumentative reply.
My point is not about equity but just plain efficiency. I'm all for a more equitable recruitment - but that's not what I addressed here.
Of course reputation matters. But reputation is not provided by references - at least imo. That person is reputed in a community or not. If you are looking for a top-notch dev, her/his reputation will be apparent.
Social proof is of utter importance, hence the idea of hiring fast to see if that person fits well in your company. How is it relevant if that person did not fit well in the previous company? It may be in some cases, if you know that previous company well, like having work for them or at least with them.
If you are looking for someone who fits well anywhere, well, that can be a must for the role or you just prefer people without much personality.
Go fast, fail fast, anybody?
A human being behaves very differently in different social contexts. Your company's context is more often than not very different than the previous company's.
1 month trial is more efficient and costs less than 6 interviews + 3 references. Give people a chance and let them surprise you. Of course, that doesn't mean hiring the first resume received but if the person appears qualified and do well in 2 interviews (HR + the new boss or colleague), that's plenty enough.