Zelalem Mekonnen
@zelalem-mekonnen·Member since March 2025·Ideas
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#3980·Benjamin DaviesOP, 13 days agoDo you mean error correction within the company or at the level of the economy?
Both. But I might be wrong on this, because competition doesn't create error correction either, humans do.
Can shorting be a mechanism of error correction?
I've also noticed incumbent advantage in business. Unless a competitor offers a better product, a company can be as corrupt and evil as possible.
Can shorting be a mechanism of error correction?
I've also noticed incumbent advantage in business. Unless a competitor offers a better product, a company can be as corrupt and lazy as possible.
Is shorting be a mechanism of error correction?
I've also noticed incumbent advantage in business. Unless a competitor offers a better product, a company can be as corrupt and evil as possible.
Can shorting be a mechanism of error correction?
I've also noticed incumbent advantage in business. Unless a competitor offers a better product, a company can be as corrupt and evil as possible.
The sentiment of the sentence stands. Even with uncomputable functions, one shouldn't waste time in trying to solve them.
The sentiment of the sentence stands. Even with uncomputable functions, one shouldn't waste time in trying to solve them.
#3973·Dennis Hackethal, 13 days agoBy definition, there is nothing in the unknowable, since it can't be known.
This isn’t true. There are unknowable things. Look up uncomputable functions, see eg
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_function#Uncomputable_functions_and_unsolvable_problems
- https://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/comments/2s2wgy/what_is_an_uncomputable_function/.
So there are things that computers like our brains can never access – there are fundamental, natural limitations.
In this context, I think of mysticism as restricting criticism and preventing error correction, ie creating a man-made barrier for reason. That’s different.
The sentiment of the sentence stands. Even with uncomputable functions, one shouldn't waste time in trying to solve them.
Per my current employment contract, my work hour is flexible. So I am looking for additional work. I cleaned up my resume and would love all criticisms and suggestions.
"Man simply invented God in order not to kill himself, that is the summary of universal history down to the moment."
"Man simply invented God in order not to kill himself, that is the summary of universal history down to the moment."
Dostoevsky
"Man simply invented God in order not to kill himself, that is the summary of universal history down to the moment."
By definition, there is nothing in the unknowable, since it can't be known. One can rationally and with confidence move on and not even entertain anything that claims to be 'beyond human understanding.'
Zelalem Mekonnen updated discussion ‘Known, unknown and unknowable’.
The title changed from ‘Known, unknown and unknowable’ to ‘Known, Unknown and Unknowable’.
When it comes to knowledge, there are three categories. Things we know, things we don't know, and things that are unknowable.
Religion and mysticism can come from confusing the unknown with the unknowable.
Religion can provide a protection against the reality of facing the unknown, which is the only way to create knowledge.
#3964·Benjamin DaviesOP, 15 days agoAn economic moat is a structural barrier that allows a business to resist the natural forces of competition. In a standard market, high profits act as a signal for other companies to enter, replicate products, and drive prices down—a process that eventually erodes a company's ability to generate wealth. A moat interrupts this cycle by making it difficult or expensive for competitors to take market share, enabling the business to perpetuate its earnings and survive far into the future.Because these barriers exist, the company does not have to constantly reinvent its core model to survive. Instead, it can rely on its established position to maintain a steady output of value. This structural durability makes the business's long-term trajectory more stable and less prone to the sudden decay that typical firms face when a new rival appears.
One of the most enduring forms of a moat is Brand Power, where a name creates such high consumer trust or habit that people are unwilling to switch to a cheaper alternative. Coca-Cola provides a classic example of this; it has spent over a century building a brand that occupies a unique "real estate" in the consumer's mind, allowing it to sell what is essentially a commodity with much higher margins than generic competitors. Similarly, Scale and Cost Advantages occur when a company grows so large that it can deliver services at a cost that smaller rivals simply cannot match. Amazon utilises its massive logistics network and volume to offer prices and delivery speeds that would be financially ruinous for a smaller retailer to attempt.
Other businesses perpetuate themselves through Network Effects, where a service becomes more valuable as more people use it. Instagram is a prime example of this dynamic; the platform's primary value to a user is the presence of their friends and family, which means a new competitor cannot simply offer a better interface to win—they would need to move the entire social circle simultaneously. This is often paired with High Switching Costs, which make it too painful for a customer to move to a competitor. Apple provides a masterclass in this with its "walled garden," an ecosystem where its hardware, software, and services (like iMessage, iCloud, and the App Store) are designed to work harmoniously together but intentionally difficult to use with outside devices. Once a user has invested in the apps, storage, and accessories within this garden, the cost of leaving—not just in money, but in time and frustration—creates a barrier that preserves the company's customer base. Each of these moats serves to insulate the business from the "mean reversion" that typically forces profits toward zero, making the long-term outcome of the business more a matter of its internal nature than of market dynamics.
Because these barriers exist, the company does not have to constantly reinvent its core model to survive.
This sentence makes an opposite point if it stopped at "does not have to constantly reinvent," meaning economic moat is slowing down error correction.
#3963·Benjamin DaviesOP, 15 days agoI don't like shorting.
When you buy a stock, the most you can lose is 100% of your investment, but your potential gain is infinite. When you short a stock, your maximum profit is capped at 100% (if the company goes bankrupt), but your potential loss is mathematically infinite because there is no limit to how high a stock price can climb. This creates a "bad bet" where you risk everything for a relatively small reward.
Shorting is also a battle against time. To succeed, you must be right about a company’s failure and the exact timing of the market's reaction, all while paying interest on the shares you borrowed. Instead of fighting the natural upward trend of human progress and productivity, it is far more rational to invest in "compounding machines"—high-quality businesses that grow in value over the long term. This allows time to work in your favor rather than against you.
Is shorting be a mechanism of error correction?
I've also noticed incumbent advantage in business. Unless a competitor offers a better product, a company can be as corrupt and evil as possible.
#3962·Benjamin DaviesOP, 15 days agoMarkets are made up of fallible people and are often wrong, sometimes wildly wrong about what an asset is worth. A good investment often involves reading the situation better than other market participants and going against the tide.
Markets are also mostly based on knowledge from the outside. If you invest based on internal knowledge, that will be called insider trading (not making a moral judgement whether insider trading is good or bad).
Prevailing explanations tend to put emphasis on the object instead of problem situations, like thinking addiction comes from the cigarette. This theory doesn't.
Prevailing explanations tend to put emphasis on the object instead of problem situations, like thinking addiction comes from the cigarette. This theory doesn't.
Prevailing explanations tend to put emphasis on the object instead of problem situations, like thinking addiction comes from the cigarette. This theory doesn't.
#3935·Dennis HackethalOP revised 20 days agoSummary
People are losing their ability to think and act on principles. But they need principles to set long-range goals and make decisions. Without them, people become their own destroyers. Modern philosophy is to blame because it attacks reason.
To stop this suicidal trend, we need to understand the following rules about principles and the relationship between principles and goals:
First, when two men or groups are in conflict while having the same basic principles, the more consistent one will win.
Since they are in conflict, at least one of them must be inconsistent. So the one with the clearer vision of his goal, who more consistently works toward it, will win. The less consistent one just hastens his adversary’s victory and becomes weaker in the process.
This dynamic applies regardless of the merits of their shared principles.
Example: republicans vs democrats. Both agree that the government should interfere with the economy. They just disagree on implementation details. Democrats are more consistently committed to growing government power; the republicans just end up “me-too’ing” them. Recent example.
As a result, government control has been growing over the decades. It will continue to grow until the communists replace socialists and ‘achieve’ “universal immolation”.
This trend can seem inevitable. Some people mistake it for historicism, but it can be reversed by a change of basic principles.
Second, when two men or groups collaborate while having different basic principles, the more evil or irrational one will win.
Mixing opposing basic principles favors bad ones and drives out the good ones. “What is the moral status of an honest man who steals once in a while?”
When good and evil collaborate, it hurts good and helps evil. The good has nothing to gain from evil, while evil stands to gain everything from the good.
Example: collaboration between an honest businessman and a swindler. The swindler does not contribute to the success of the business; the honest one’s reputation ends up luring in more victims than the swindler could have fooled on his own.
Another example: membership of the Soviet Union in the UN. The resulting collaboration between the West and the Soviet Union gave the latter unearned respect, moral sanction, and access to resources. In exchange, the Western world has been swallowed by “cynicism, bitterness, hopelessness, fear and nameless guilt…”
Third, defining opposite basic principles clearly and openly helps rationality; hiding or evading them helps irrationality.
The rational side of a conflict wants to be understood. It’s in harmony with reality, so it has nothing to hide. But the irrational side “has to deceive, to confuse, to evade, to hide its goals.”
The good, the rational must be actively upheld; the bad, the irrational is achieved only by default, by not acting. Construction is hard; destruction is easy.
Lessons
Adhere to your principles with consistency.
Never mix opposing basic principles! Leave irrational/evil people to the consequences of their errors.
Be open and transparent; don’t hide things.
A criticism that I often hear when people try to live by their principles is something along the lines of "you think you're better than us?" This kind of criticism has often stopped people from defending and living by their principles, especially if they have been seen violating their own principles.
A defense against this is that if someone continually brings up past mistakes in order to hang them over another person, then it might be in that person's best interest to end the relationship. Give warnings, and be clear, but if no change is observed, one has the right and the obligation to end the relationship. And as for being better than others, I view it as another form of wealth. Some people are better than others financially. But that isn't because "that's who they are" or "born that way" or "got lucky." It was because they had the skills to make money. Being in a better place morally is both possible and desirable.
#1210·Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 year agoThere is a similar (identical?) theory put forward by Marc Lewis in The Biology of Desire. He explains addiction as the process of "reciprocal narrowing". The process of reciprocal narrowing does not remove conflicting desires, but instead reinforces a pattern of dealing with conflict through a progressively narrower, habitual response (substance, action, mental dissociation). Addiction, therefore, as you suggested, is a process of managing the "conflict between two or more preferences within the mind."
There is also a definition by Gabor Mate that is similar to this. I will add a link when I find it.
#749·Dennis HackethalOP, over 1 year agoPrevailing explanations are immoral (#739) and false (#742). My theory does not have those flaws from the linked criticisms.
Prevailing explanations tend to put emphasis on the object instead of problem situations, like thinking addiction comes from the cigarette. This theory doesn't.
Have you thought about quite quitting?
Could you also come up with the reasons you dislike your job? Is it because of co-workers, managers or the work you actually do? In either case, the calculation in the calculated risk of quitting your job might be mentally checking out from it, but reaping the good thing about it, which is the financial stability.
Have you thought about quiet quitting?
Could you also come up with the reasons you dislike your job? Is it because of co-workers, managers or the work you actually do? In either case, the calculation in the calculated risk of quitting your job might be mentally checking out from it, but reaping the good thing about it, which is the financial stability.
#3638·Tyler MillsOP, about 1 month agoOption 1: Continue working the day job and balancing the other pursuits on the side.
Have you thought about quite quitting?
Could you also come up with the reasons you dislike your job? Is it because of co-workers, managers or the work you actually do? In either case, the calculation in the calculated risk of quitting your job might be mentally checking out from it, but reaping the good thing about it, which is the financial stability.
#3358·Dennis Hackethal, 2 months agoOrganic food is a scam. Participants in double-blind experiments can’t tell what’s organic and what isn’t. Organic food hasn’t been found to be healthier than non-organic food. The ‘organic’ label was never even meant as a health endorsement. It’s just a way for stores to charge you more. Don’t be a sucker.
https://news.immunologic.org/p/organic-foods-are-not-healthieror
In the US, correct. Not in other countries.
#3351·Benjamin DaviesOP, 2 months agoThe current industrialisation of food is problematic, but these are parochial problems. There is nothing about industrialised food production that is fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. Problems are soluble!
I disagree. In case of mass starvation, GMOs and the like make sense. But besides that, I am for eating food that grows without human intervention.