ergodicity001 | 5 years ago | on: Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Software Engineers
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ergodicity001 | 5 years ago | on: Do countries lose religion as they gain wealth? (2013)
The link only talks about economic uncertainty. Clearly, there is more to it.
For example, I would say every single person is routinely perplexed by 50% of the rest of the planet (aka the opposite gender). That is a constant source of uncertainty, but doesn't cause us all to become religious.
Besides, even the richest substrata of economically developed countries just somehow automatically gravitate towards religion-influenced philanthropy. A lot of these philanthropy vehicles are predominantly religious in nature, e.g. a missionary to build schools in Africa. The economic certainty experienced by the rich folks isn't making them object to the religious nature of these organizations even if they themselves don't explicitly believe in religion. They could just stop donating, but something tells them the good outweighs the (in their view) bad.
I think there is a deep need for people to find meaning in their lives, but it is also a personal and subjective notion. Maybe richer countries are generally better set up for this because of the larger number of opportunities for people to find meaning in the way they define it.
ergodicity001 | 5 years ago | on: Facebook fired an employee who posted evidence of preferential treatment
I read that small businesses' ad spending account for over 90% of Facebook revenue.
If there is one thing you don't want to be right now, it is a small business owner fighting to bring employees back to work in an unsafe environment while operating at reduced capacity. What's the incentive for the employee to return to work? Jim Cramer said it well on CNBC when he asked how he can compete with the federal government to bring people back to work:
https://youtu.be/qG_Nq7kIojI?t=367
This is Jim Cramer we are talking about. He can probably even afford to overpay (and outbid the federal government) for a while to bring back his restaurant staff. Regular small businesses don't enjoy such advantages.
When these small businesses start rolling over one by one, there will just be a lot fewer small businesses left. And those who do survive will probably shrink their ad budgets.
I once heard a funny comment: Google shows you ads for stuff you know you want to buy. Facebook shows you ads for stuff you didn't know you want to buy (search intent of course). I would say search intent will drive ad spend for the foreseeable future. Plus, if it is a secular bear market for small businesses, ad rates on Google would also come down for those small businesses which do make it out alive at the end of COVID.
ergodicity001 | 5 years ago | on: Facebook fired an employee who posted evidence of preferential treatment
I saw a video recently where someone was discussing Facebook's "moat". Essentially, among Big Tech, it has the least defensible moat, which I think is true.
https://youtu.be/4SrxqfKn9Bw?t=1605
I think Facebook has very little choice right now. Libra could have been a moat, but it is more or less dead now. They are being cornered into being more pro-conservative, because otherwise their moat (engagement, which is what advertisers pay for) will collapse by the time COVID is done. They need to walk the fine line between proving their engagement and hoping that advertisers would actually want to show ads to the group which is engaged.
ergodicity001 | 5 years ago | on: Thomas Sowell interview
What do you think of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's claim that Piketty basically has his math all wrong?
https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d...
>>with not only capital in general but the state too
Why should capital in general be a problem? Isn't it crony capitalism the actual problem? If you are very rich, that isn't usually a problem to your neighbor. But if you are very rich and can thus get away with tax evasion but your neighbor lands in jail for the same reason, isn't that when it actually becomes a problem?
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I have some friends who have worked at MSFT for a long time, about 20 years or so. There was a time when they used to talk about open source as if it was cancer (~2011). When MSFT started embracing the cancer, they didn't really up and leave. Now they are all talking about how great this open source thing is.
But even funnier was when they used to complain about Google's rampant user tracking. And then one day they added targeted ads into Windows 10. Did these people suddenly decide "enough is enough" and go and join the EFF? You already know the answer to that.