Quora Answers
1,699 answers written on Quora between 2010 and 2014, during the peak of the Ribbonfarm era. Questions from others; answers entirely by Venkat. 701 substantive answers are indexed here. For a specific answer, use Search or ask vgr_zirp.
- Should the TV Show "The Office" be taught in universities?
Well.... first, thanks :) Second, I admit I myself am a bit of a skeptic here. Most of the people who have resonated strongly with the GP series have liked it because it helped them make sense of the…
- Should a startup be concerned about building its business on an API?
I am not sure 'API' is relevant. This is a business partnering (supply partnerships, channel partnerships for distribution software platform choice etc.) question, and the logic is the same as the que…
- What are some ways to increase the coherence of a collective?
My cynical answer is: find a definition of good vs. bad that most of them believe in, and that key outsiders DON'T believe in, radicalize it a bit, and frame every important objective in terms of that…
- Is there such a thing as "Paternalistic Libertarianism" or is the phrase a contradiction in terms?
I think it is a contradiction in terms. I think the Thaler/Sunstein behavioral economics model in "nudge," which made the idea popular, is deeply flawed. It has all the problems of centralized plannin…
- What's your dream kitchen?
I go back and forth between nomadic minimalism (just a good knife and a frying pan in a backpack) and settled minimalism. Realistically though, a settled-minimalist kitchen, but not in a backpack, is…
- What is the best way to get Borders and Barnes and Noble to carry a self-published book?
The big retail chains are a terrible channel for self-publishers. Simply not worth the marketing effort to even get on the shelves. You should instead optimize for Amazon. Try Aaron Shepherd's "Aiming…
- What, if any, is the golden amount of traffic to on a website to start - #1 bring a profit, #2 seeing ROI?
I think this question is badly mis-framed. You need to just think in terms of revenue generators for your site, put them in, keep experimenting and tweaking, and at some point, if there is value and y…
- Are any startups hiring non-technical business positions anymore, or is everyone just going to build products and hope a business happens?
My interpretation is different. The demand for good business people is actually higher than engineers, but the reason you don't see it in the explicitly-defined job market is that truly good business …
- What stops Washington, DC from becoming a startup hub?
I've been in the area 2 years, and of the reasons people have mentioned, I'd say that the two biggest reasons are low spatial density and lack of an anchor institution (generalizing from 'company'). …
- How can iStrategyLabs build a better DC and world?
I have to disagree with Zvi (and therefore with what you guys might actually do, Peter). It is time to acknowledge that the Y-combinator model has become a victim of its own success by spreading reso…
- Is the "idea vs execution" paradigm being challenged by all these incubators?
Marc Andreessen explains it best in this article+video: http://trailmeme.com/walk/The_Ul... To paraphrase, he says that what is important is evidence of ability to think things through. Investors as…
- Can an entrepreneur create his own destiny or is it the VC who draws the path for him?
John Greathouse has provided the idealist answer, which is great for keeping yourself motivated. It also helps to maintain a much more pragmatic view alive in parallel: it is entirely a situational s…
- What are the best ways to prioritize a list of product features?
I'll add one note here: good people with a bad process will outperform bad people with a good process every time. While the processes and heuristics people have offered are all good (and I've used mo…
- How much of the aggregate technological progress of mankind has been achieved during the last century?
I think you mean Kenya and Tanzania, not Ethiopia, but never mind that. Your question has a hidden assumption that technology is an objective kind of "progress" in the sense of evolving in a specific…
- If I want to be an entrepreneur later, should I now work for a large company or a startup?
I think it doesn't matter where you are/how you start. I learned by having my first job at a startup (on a 1 year CPT stint btw, so yeah, you can weave things into the path to green cards/citizenship)…
- How do you gauge communication skills in an interview?
I find it far more useful to think in terms of thinking skills rather than comm. skills, but there are things to look out for that suggest a sophisticated communicator (which always arises from sophis…
- What are effective interview questions to ask candidates for a research role?
All interviewing in research roles tends to be based on a) a 1 hour seminar given by the candidate b) current people talking to the person 1:1 in conversations that usually sound more like peer-to-pee…
- In the United States, are the rich paying enough taxes?
There are more actual facts here than the polarized left/right leaning answers suggest. Look at this excellent 2002 piece by Krugman in the NYT. http://bit.ly/dS7gEt Short answer: yes, they pay too …
- You're a product manager and product is set to launch on Tuesday. On Monday a competitor launches a better product at lower price. How do you respond?
Fascinating question. And I have to admit I mostly disagree with Cindy's answer. I have been in this situation once, and we ended up delaying by several months. As Jason and Tao Tao note, it depends …
- Startups in 2011: What will be the next big thing after Facebook and Twitter?
The people who are offering the Zen-like answer ("the big thing that can be predicted is not the real big thing, it does not have true buddha-nature") are being a little too skeptical. Historically, t…
- Can a man's destiny have varying degrees of entropy (number of ways something can arrange itself)?
The idea of entropy absolutely can apply to human lives and destinies. You've got it backwards though: entropy increases through a human life. A simple and visible example is facial wrinkles. Young pe…
- What is the foundational story of Western civilization?
The basic universalist Grand Narrative (GN) of course, goes something like this: 1. In the beginning there were Greece and Rome which raised humans above the barbarism of the decadent near eastern "p…
- Is the following/follower model the new standard of social connection?
Symmetrical and asymmetrical models derive from fundamentally different parts of very basic human psychology. Symmetric is primarily about trust, cooperation, socialization and belonging. Asymmetric i…
- How can academics increase the visibility of their research?
The big problem in research is that the main"visibility" tactics only really work after you've already established some visibility. Chicken and egg. So you can divide tactics into "consolidate your …
- Which company or companies are in need of a rebrand/shake up the most? How and why?
People are conflating rebranding, repositioning and strategic business model changes (the big brother of "pivot" for startups). Lots of healthy, but growth-limited companies could benefit from a rebr…
- Why does U.S. society cling to the suburban model despite its inefficiency, unsustainability, and many social ills?
Why on earth do you think people want to do efficient, sustainable, social-good things? Most people don't make life choices based on those variables. They are at best garnishes applied later, to creat…
- What percentage of the book industry is dominated by eBooks (Kindle, iPad editions, etc.) as opposed to the share of printed?
This may help http://www.teleread.com/paul-bib... In addition to the excellent answers by Chris Jensen and Julito Varela, I'll add a couple of points: Amazon is only one channel, but it is definite…
- Am I an elitist to think that most people are stupid? I worked to put myself through school, became an entrepreneur, and I’m happily married, fit, and healthy. I tell people my “secret” is commitment and hard work, but they just want shortcuts.
I am going to bet that not as many people ask you "what's your secret?" as you would like. A few probably do. But more do not. Especially people you wish would ask you. You are puzzled. Your life lo…
- Is social responsibility on the way to becoming fashionable in the general Western population?
Difficult question. I think it always has been fashionable, but you see more socially responsible behavior as you present people with clearer feedback on the social/moral consequences of their actio…
- Is it troubling that skin lightening products are becoming fashionable among Indian women?
"Are becoming"? The only thing new in the last decade is that foreign manufacturers are jumping into the market, and that more people now have the means and avenues for upward mobility, and increased …
- Who should Google hire as its "Head of Social" and what would/should they do exactly?
I think the job description shows that Google has still not truly understood the "social" challenge. Though I respect some of the candidate names that have been thrown up, this is actually a job for…
- Assuming the 2-person company is angel funded and the product hasn't launched, how many hours should a co-founder be working a day?
If you are both techies, doing development, I don't know what to say. If you are both biz guys, can I come over and look at the strange pink giraffes? :) If you are the biz guy, and he's the tech gu…
- How do you decide whether or not to go forward on a business idea?
Never evaluate a business idea in isolation. Always use 5-8 other ideas, even if you only intend to pursue 1. Your own, not benchmarks. Objectivity is not helpful in the exercise I am going to suggest…
- Why don't big companies innovate more?
Big topic. Huge topic. Shelves-loads of books. In general, you are right. Big companies cannot innovate well in the way you are implying ("disruptive"), though there are important exceptions (they can…
- What's the best way to manage MVP user expectations and why?
If you can only show them something in 4-6 months, what exactly have you gotten out the door as an MVP? Is it one of those landing page+email sign up MVPs? In that case, just send ONE email to the sig…
- What goes into a product mission statement?
I agree 75% with Jake Holman. A positioning statement is exactly that, and is the more practical importance of the two. In lean startup terms, it is your basic PMF hypothesis. It is a very practical,…
- Are Design Thinking and Six Sigma mutually exclusive?
Six Sigma led to Lean Six Sigma, which lead to Design for Lean Six Sigma (DfLSS). There is an exploratory component to DfLSS called DMEDI, that perhaps comes closest to open-ended, creative design thi…
- Why is there such a short supply of designers in Silicon Valley?
I am surprised people haven't really separated out "design" into better defined subcategories. The scarcity is not evenly spread across all of them. I distinguish 3 levels in the design stack. The sc…
- How should I structure a doctoral thesis on business strategy?
"Structure follows strategy" -- Alfred Chandler This is easily the most famous quote in the history of strategy. So you are asking a self-referential question :). There are no good definitions of "st…
- How viable is the academic peer review system today?
The main problem is that it is just too damn slow and archaic. The arXiv model in physics is kinda the jury-rigged version of what it should be. Of the 5 journal papers I published before giving …
- Is China to blame for America's economic woes?
It's an embrace of mutually-assured destruction (MAD) in an economic sense (the term MAD was first used for the cold war, with ref to nukes). Others have outlined the elements of the MAD scheme (trea…
- How should one deal with a coworker who consistently waits until the last minute to ask for things?
This is not enough information to answer the question. The necessary tactics are very different depending on lots of missing situational details. 1. WHY does he wait? The Friday pattern suggests a sp…
- How do you know what you don't know you don't know?
Let's call 'em UU's (unknown-unknowns). Here's a breakdown: 1. Continuous UUs: things you find if you get to the boundary of your current knowledge. A literal example is spatial knowledge. As you wan…
- Which movies feature exceptional character development?
Juno has some of the best character development I've seen in recent times. The character arcs of Jason Reitman and Jennifer Garner are exceptionally well done. The movie has you believing initially th…
- What makes it hard to give and get honest feedback in many organizations?
The conflict of interest created by the cooperation/competition structure of a corporation (or any organization) is the reason. That's one reason you can be surprisingly open with a random stranger yo…
- How will the rise of print-on-demand services affect our opinions of books that are self-published, particularly in academia?
Academic book publishing has been in deep trouble for longer than regular book publishing, since it was always a game of very small volumes. So paradoxically, it actually has much less to fear, and a …
- What is it that directs the attention?
The question can be answered at a prosaic neuroscientific level that skirts the question of consciousness (i.e. attention as an executive function in the neocortex), and at a philosophy of mind level.…
- Does the difference between "alpha" and "beta" behavior depend on gender? Why do we speak of alpha/beta males/females instead of just people?
I am not 100% sure, but I think there are both matriarchies and patriarchies among anthropoid species. Beyond apes, you definitely have both. Elephant society is matriarchal. So too, I believe, is cam…
- How do you teach a non-designer to effectively critique a design?
I haven't used it myself yet, but I really like the concept behind "collage" techniques. Give users pen/paper to draw what they want, or take the existing elements of your design and make 'em cut out …
- I'm about to quit my job to learn to program. What should I do?
Wow! 25 and 100k. Impressive, if you earned it. For starters, take 3 months off, wander around, drift, go to Jakarta, etc. Re: programming: you don't know if you are going to like it enough to put …
- Is there a business model which will support intelligent investigative journalism, or will the future just be about leaks from government like Wikileaks?
This is a huge topic in journalism today. It's almost the only topic. A special feature of the decline of old media has been that it is this "core" activity that got hollowed out first. The only viabl…
- What are some examples of tech startups that cleverly solved the chicken and egg problem?
Pretty much EVERY startup that is not solving an obvious problem with a customer already signed-on, is solving a chicken and egg problem. The chicken is the customer, the egg is the product. 1. Build…
- How do web startups solve the chicken and egg problem of having initial content before a public launch, if the web app is based entirely on user generated content?
The simplest answer is to pay dedicated content creators to prime the pump. So long as you are transparent about it (via an 'editor' type handle). You COULD do the shyster version (paying 1-2 freelanc…
- In what circumstances or contexts is debate useful?
Kinda tangential, but Stefan King made a nice trail covering this. http://trailmeme.com/trails/How_... See the debating related items near the top right. Complicated topic, but one of the simplest/…
- How important is it for a prototype used to pitch investors be fully functional versus a page-to-page HTML click-through simulating functionality?
For first-timers, I suspect the answer is always "prototype" and I think the reason is a very subtle one: a team can "gel" only through repeated full-cycle product iterations (concept, development, de…
- How do I discern a great technical co-founder from an average one for a web 2.0 project?
Let me tell you a story from when I was first employee at a startup long ago. The founders were a husband and wife couple, and the husband had gradually built up the site over 2 years of evening/weeke…
- Is leading a company towards innovation the same as betting on paradigm shifts?
It will take me some effort to first clean up your rather muddled question before I can answer. I wouldn't have bothered except that one part of your question is very interestingly phrased. You said "…
- Which is the best book for Indian history?
A good, dull and basic starting point to get oriented is "An Advanced History of India" by Majumdar, Raychaudhari and Datta. Historigraphy on the subcontinent is generally very weak, so external sour…
- What are good laymen physics books to read after A Brief History of Time?
The Superstring theory debates are very interesting to catch up on. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2007/0... Penrose's "Road to Reality" is a magisterial and very fat book at a layman++ level that I hope…
- Are memory and intelligence correlated?
Absolutely. You can't even separate the two in the architecture of the human brain, since the way memories are processed from sensory to short-term to long-term is actually integral to how we think. J…
- What, if any, is the correlation between depression and intelligence?
Quite strong, and well-studied. It's called the "depressive realism" effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dep... By this theory, you perceive reality more realistically when depressed, and that make…
- If someone were to want to build a successful competitor to Facebook, what are all the most essential ingredients?
I disagree pretty much completely with the answers so far. Facebook is entrenched, and owns the market position outright, whatever its deficiencies. How many "improved" keyboards have attempted to di…
- Have corporate owned cities or countries existed?
This probably should count as having already happened, and increasingly LESS likely to happen, not more. In the past, there were far fewer controls on corporations and they could officially run armies…
- Why did the roman empire decline?
The answers so far mostly cover the phenomenology of the fall (and I am talking here about Rome proper, not Byzantium). This is rather like noting that at 8:15 PM the patient's liver failed and that a…
- How does classifying oneself as an existential atheist manifest itself on a daily basis?
Existentialism appeals to highly individualist people ("irreducible subjective") who believe that the core of their existence cannot be shared with the collective (hence "existential aloneness"). In …
- Will there ever be a day where new startup ideas are hard to come by due to existing and lasting ideas or will there always be room for more?
The number of ideas need never go down in principle. Human creativity is inexhaustible. But the yield rate may start to go down (i.e. success percentage), with the numbe of viable markets going down. …
- Being a founder of a tech startup , what skills or qualities should I have?
First, non-technical people need to get clear that they ARE in fact non-technical. I was kidding myself on being a "technical" guy simply because I am an engineer (PhD in aerospace engineering) and ha…
- Which industries most depend on things being complicated?
I am going to interpret this as "needlessly complex" as in, there's no physics-level minimum threshold of complexity. So 'rocket science' actually doesn't qualify. There really is no way you can make …
- What does it feel like to be unattractive and desired by none?
The short, impressionistic version of my answer is to refer you to the Thai folktale about a handsome young Buddhist monk who deliberately gained weight to become ugly enough to be allowed to go-monk…
- How come my cleaning lady isn't in better shape?
1. The fat cleaning lady may be the stereotype, but I've met several who were very fit and slim 2. But... as a member of the generally poor class, the answer is probably the same as for the question …
- Which is harder, being poor in America or being middle class in the developing world?
Definitely being poor in America. Especially poor and black. Definitions/metrics may vary but the broad conclusion is the same no matter how you slice and dice. It depends partly on which corner of …
- What does it mean to create value?
I have an incredibly simple necessary and sufficient test for value-addition. If and only if you feel transformed, there has been value addition. Any act of creative-destruction will transform you p…
- What is a good replacement for the “del.icio.us” bookmarks service?
Late to the party here, but if you want a power-tool upgrade, go with http://trailmeme.com ... it's a service offered by Xerox. I started the project and run it, so I am biased, but it really is the b…
- When trying to generate critical mass for a website, which approach is better? Go for a global audience upfront or target a small niche first, generate hype, then expand?
I think the evidence seems to be in favor of narrow niche first. But there are ambiguities. eBay (possibly apocryphal): Pez dispensersAmazon: books backlistNetflix: the canonical 'long tail' example …
- Is there a difference between a thinker and a pundit?
In the original Indian sense of the word, "pundit" (which is spelled pandit in India these days) refers to a priest specializing in religious rituals, who is typically hired for everything from corona…
- Why does Venkatesh Rao
As Hang commented, I run a mailing list called "Be Slightly Evil" (http://beslightlyevil.com ), so the tag-line is a bit of personal branding and advertising. But that's effect, not cause. I guess I…
- What connections can be drawn between systems thinking and Eastern thought?
I wouldn't say the connection is with Eastern thought. The popular idea that Western thought is reductionist while Eastern thought is holistic is a fairly dumb and self-serving one championed by a few…
- How do you communicate your design solutions to developers and convince them that it might be the right solution?
It is almost structurally impossible for this to happen in a team that follows an agile model like scrum, since the whole system is designed around user stories, wireframes/mockups created by UX peopl…
- Does Trailmeme feel like a startup?
Only to the extent that we've consciously tried to adopt a startup culture. So maybe 50-70%. Blind adoption/championing of startup ideas is a recipe for being (justifiably) ignored and sidelined as a…
- What does it feel like to be poor?
Lucretia is probably right that the true third-world poor never get close to a computer. But their lives may not be as unstable as her speculation suggests. "Portfolios of the Poor" provides a pretty…
- What consumer technologies started in the military?
Microwave ovens came out of radio researchGPS as Ryan already mentionedJet engines (and therefore most modern air travel)Arguably, all of computing (Turing and his team cracking the Enigma code, targe…
- What is a day in the life of a Product Manager like?
Scott's answer is excellent and covers the functional aspects. Let me try and translate that into a richer description of a "typical day" and important kinds of "non typical" days. The substance is ba…
- What’s wrong with OpenID? Why hasn’t it taken over the world?
Yishan has a pretty extreme indictment. Several valid issues there, but I don't agree on 2 fronts: that there isn't a real problem, and that OpenID is valueless. First front. There IS a problem. I do…
- How does Pearltrees compare to Trailmeme?
Francois is mistaken. We had been internally testing Trailmeme for months before we first heard of Pearltrees. The project launched in Xerox in December 2007, and actually started life as a WordPress …
- What are some good examples of emotional intelligence?
My favorite symptom is a controlled sense of humor. Both people who turn everything into a joke and people who never laugh are seriously low on EI. This includes comedians in their non-performance par…
- How do people transition away from an attitude of personal powerlessness and defeatism?
Read the literature on the concept of "learned helplessness" ... there is some self-help lit on the idea too, but most of the formal results have to do with animal behavior. But humans basically exhib…
- What are some contemporary status symbols in the Western world?
I'll stick to status symbols of the product variety. Services are too complex to analyze and segue into lifestyles and therefore into a discussion of "status" proper, rather than the symbols thereof. …
- How do you manage distributed teams? What methodologies do you use? What tools?
This is a huge topic, and hundreds of people weigh in every day with thoughts ranging from book-length to tweet-sized. I have read far too much of it. For a long time I took the topic seriously and l…
- Why do so many young adults live with their parents these days in the United States?
I believe it is the last 30 years that has been anomalous, not the current trend. Home ownership has not been as universal at any other time or place in history. For the privileged few in the rest of …
- Is it defensible for Yelp to construct a review filtering algorithm upon the assumption that reviews written by more prolific reviewers are more reliable? To the degree that reviews written by one-time reviewers may be suppressed.
So this would be an open invitation to people to game the system by simply writing a lot of reviews? (this is the sort of pattern that would get quickly spotted and shared). Seems like if I had an age…
- Why do self-help books sell so well, if they mostly don't work?
Instant gratification, ability to forget concerns for a while, feel pumped up, feel good about yourself and the people you are with. That's what alcohol and drugs do for you. Sorry. I meant self-hel…
- What are the most important mathematical theorems?
My top dozen candidates that are relatively easy for non-mathematicians to understand (this would probably change if I thought about it more... and this is in no particular order): The Central Limit …
- What are the most common misconceptions about marketing?
The word is nothing BUT misconceptions and I almost think it should be retired. It is a bloated and far-too-big umbrella term covering too much territory. On one border, it looks indistinguishable f…
- How is the word curator being used or abused to describe the aggregation of content in social networks?
There are two source metaphors to think about: museum curators and grounds curators (people who maintain paths and trails, or gardens). In both cases, somebody is putting a lot of intelligence into …
- I'm an enterprising new college graduate. Should I move to China? Is that where the action is going to be in my lifetime?
According to Kaplan's "Monsoon," (excellent read; just finished), Asia as a whole has Africa (East Africa in particular) as its equivalent to the American West in the 1800s. If you want the Wild West …
- How can a designer work around corporate brand standards?
There are a few ways to do this. Almost none of them is something a "designer" should take on. All of them require skill and understanding of marketing, not design, so if you want to do this, make sur…
- Why do I still turn to books to learn something in the age of the Internet?
I think Aaron and Sam may have misunderstood the question. I don't believe this is about format (physical manifestation), but form (the kind of content). Real answer: the medium is the message. Bo…
- Why do people share?
For a narrower, but revealing look at the current surge in sharing 2.0 ideas, try the recent book on collaborative consumption, "What's Mine is Yours" http://www.collaborativeconsumpt... This relate…
- I am in the midst of starting a digital media agency. How do I find new clients?
Proactively do free work for people who need it, by way of introduction. I have had readers on my blog who have been so annoyed by my bad design they've gone out of their way to send me free designs f…
- Why do people who haven't started their own company call themselves entrepreneurs?
The skeptics are right. About 80% of those who use the term are not entrepreneurial at all, but looking for the cachet. It is now another resume-builder buzz-word like "systems thinker" and "goal-orie…
- Stovetop espresso makers - to clean or not?
I've been using a Bialetti for years now, and I only rinse. But I am rather sloppy about it, usually not emptying the grounds and rinsing until the next time I make coffee, which means grounds often s…
- Why are tech-bloggers so bent on discrediting Google Buzz, while overlooking bigger social flops like Apple's Ping?
The criticism is completely justified, and the comparison with things like Ping is meaningless. One simple reason: "social" is central to the future of Google according to its own visions, and Buzz w…
- What are the linkages between the ways humans construct narrative and the structure (physical and/or cognitive) of the human brain?
Our memory processes appear to be narrative-based at a basic level. See Medina's "Brain Rules." But beyond that, you'll have better luck looking for a connection at a cognitive science level than a n…
- Are Bollywood movies intentionally campy?
Your overall question is too complex to answer on Quora, but I'll respond to the example of the "Golimaar" video. In that case, the camp factor is unintended. Believe it. Any evident humor is just ord…
- Is it possible to create a general system simulator, if so how?
As others have pointed out, at one level this question is about Universal Turing machines. So that answer is probably unsatisfying. Can you do something a little narrower that is not a UTM? Since you…
- Is the layout of sections in a bookstore random or is there a method for deciding which sections go where?
Heck no, it is very far from random. The approach is a special application of general retail layout practices, which you can learn about in Paco Underhill's classic "Why We Buy." I highly recommend re…
- What is an easy step by step process for creating a brand voice?
I kinda disagree strongly with the current trend towards "authenticity" and "be yourself." I think it is a meaningless fad that doesn't really work except for truly personal brands, like a blog or a o…
- When will publishers decide to stop printing books?
The right cutoff point is when printed books become collectors' fads, like LPs today. The fad market will likely be less than 1% of the size of the current market. I think this will happen by approxi…
- Is it detrimental to admit you're an atheist? Why?
Yes. But not for the reasons you might be thinking of. It is not the risk of offending strongly religious people that matters. They go around offending each other all the time anyway, way more than a…
- I am about to launch a new social startup on books. Who are the key people I should contact who can provide know how and good knowledge on the industry?
If you don't already know them, the key people in the industry are rather unlikely to talk to you. I suggest attending a couple of relevant conferences to get the lay of the land and figuring out ho…
- As a UX designer, what do you wish product managers knew about UX?
I've been on the receiving end: being told what my UX designer thought I should know. The message was: "shut the hell up and listen, and stop putting decisions that should be mine to a democratic vo…
- Can computers fall in love?
I disagree strongly with Gavan Woolery 's answer [update: not so strongly after Gavan's 2 updates], which is the standard "strong AI" position, not because I think there is something ineffable about "…
- How can I practice and further my studies in mathematics in my own free time?
I have found that self-study is VERY different from learning in a classroom. You cannot use the same materials or methods. The best way to learn mathematics unfortunately, is in a classroom with a go…
- How relevant will Analyst Firms like Gartner (with its MQ) and Forrester be in the next 10 years? Are new models necessary, and will new models emerge to benchmark and rate vendors/services?
Michael Wolfe frames the problem with nanometric precision. The solution might well be equally precise: LinkedIn. The new "companies" feature is just the tip of the iceberg of what LinkedIn could do…
- How important is it to have a clear purpose in approaching life? Why so?
Teilhard de Chardin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie... ) said something along the lines of "meaning/purpose is not given to us, it is the purpose of life to search for purpose" (very vague rephrase…
- If I have to pick *one*, what is the best software development/engineering/operations title for a high performing team?
A commodity title like "member of technology staff" can be imposed, will cover the job, and add zero catalysis value or talent-attraction value. OTOH, a "branded" title like "pirate" cannot be impose…
- Is the phenomenon of ethnogenesis an example of memetic autopoiesis of a collective intelligence?
I think "memetic autopoiesis" is a contradiction in terms to a certain extent, since autopoiesis is kinda the opposite dynamic to evolution of any sort. Evolution converges into a diversity of species…
- How do you start a guest blogging program for your own blog?
Having tried a couple of times and basically failed, I can list a bunch of points about what can go wrong. But that isn't the same thing as knowing how to do it right of course. I have basically give…
- Why do Indians rarely talk about the caste system to outsiders, even though it appears to affect even their interactions and attitudes towards each other outside of India? Is there a shame or unspoken code about talking about this?
There is no unwritten secret code of silence or shame or taboo. There is tons written about it in the Indian media, and everybody talks about it all the time. It is just an extremely complicated, extr…
- How would you measure the ROI in social media?
You may like this fictional dialogue I wrote on this problem of ROI and measurement... http://enterprise2blog.com/2008/... The short skeptical answer is probably that "sure you can measure it, but i…
- What is the ideal percentage of revenue that you should apply to a marketing budget for a new business?
Marketing is usually absorbed in a line item called SAG (selling, admin, general) within general balance sheets. In young businesses, where admin and general are low, SAG is almost entirely "selling c…
- For new entrepreneurs, are the incentives now aligned such that it's more rational to go after a first time failure than a first time success?
This actually doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Just a business-level application of the s/w development principle, "build the first version to throw away" by Frederick Brooks. I wouldn't say "desig…
- How credible and attention-deserving is Nassim Taleb?
He's an elitist, snooty rogue, who you are forced to like despite his rather infuriating "cultivated" airs :) He deserves all the attention he gets simply for making fun of academics who take themse…
- How important is a well designed logo for a startup? Should I stick with the logo I designed in 10 minutes or pay a designer to do one correctly?
It matters a lot. It is the primary meme that you want to get stuck in people's head. It must be meaningfully associated with your brand, and have all the right connotations. Check out RWW's list of…
- How should one market a new offline magazine or publication?
By creating a site to give away the sample PDF of the first issue free, for those who sign up for your email list. SEO it to death for your target market, and promote it like crazy. This should not …
- Is it best to think like a Go, chess, or poker player?
I don't play any of the games. In fact I suck at most of them. But (perhaps because of my lack of skill), I am fascinated by (and seriously study) the role of metaphor and narrative in how games map t…
- What is the purpose of foam on the top of coffee drinks?
When well made, the foam should actually be a "microfoam" comprising a thin layer of tiny bubbles that actually have some coffee flavor and a hint of brown visible. The only pure white should be the l…
- Who makes a better Business Professor, a PhD with deep research in the field, or a former Senior Executive with little/no advanced education?
This is a false comparison. There are FOUR possible comparisons you can make here among 4 types of people. Bad or good businessperson vs. bad or good academic. If it's a bad versus bad comparison, n…
- What are the benefits to obtaining a PhD in the field of Education?
This view is a few years old, so things might have improved since then. That said... The main benefit is that you can join an education program as a professor and in turn train other graduate student…
- How do you become a conference speaker?
"Conference speaking" is not a job or a target activity. You speak in conferences as part of other jobs/professions/lines of work, and as your reputation and success in your chosen line of work increa…
- What makes you want to follow a leader?
There are several kinds of followers: Worshippers who are in awe of anything they don't understand. Extreme form: cult membersHigh priests: people who codify, discipline and enforce the messy visions…
- Where can you get a Ph.D. in Digital Sociology
HCI, computer science, marketing, sociology, psychology, social psychology, anthropology, management, organizational theory. When a new subject emerges, if you wait till it is formalized and codified…
- What is the difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur?
Interesting question. At an airport once, I met a small business consultant who was in the business of helping people start restaurants. He said he always recommended buying a franchise instead of thi…
- How much does psychology/marketing factor into the pricing of everyday items in the Western world?
You are right. Pricing is mostly psychology. There is a lot of sophisitcated math and analysis that goes on, but that's mostly a sideshow. The real action is in the psychodrama that goes on between "c…
- For a personal blog, what are the pros and cons to using one's name versus using a catchy title?
I have a "no specific theme" personal blog (ribbonfarm.com), and my name is not publicly well-known other than through my blog. I also own the domain for my name (venkateshrao.com), which is redirecte…
- What is the difference between tactical and strategic efforts, and is their difference simply a matter of time duration over which the efforts show their impact?
I am afraid most of the answers here fall victim to the standard confusion around these terms. Nothing but pain, ambiguity and lack of clarity results from using these common distinctions, to the po…
- Are all living things just some complex chemical macro-molecules?
Try Gregory Chaitin, "Towards a Mathematical Definition of Life" as a starting point. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/vie... Self-replication is correlated with, but neither necessary, nor sufficient f…
- Why do smart people, who know that this world is so complex, bang on about needing simplicity - and yet don't want to put the effort in?
"I would not give a farthing for the simplicity on this side of complexity. I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." (SOTOSOC) -- Oliver Wendell Holmes. Getting to SO…
- What are some claims by Malcolm Gladwell that are incorrect?
Thanks Ani Ravi for that thorough round-up. If this thread doesn't get to best resource status on this question, it ought to :) Addendum: Duncan Watts at Yahoo did some rather clever modeling that s…
- How common is lucid dreaming?
Quite common. I don't know about lucid dreaming itself, but a more extreme form that often follows a lucid dream, called sleep paralysis, is apparently experienced by about 25% of the population at le…
- Can seasonal affective disorder be cured using computer-mediated reality?
I very much doubt it. One of the causes of SAD is lack of enough sunlight, but this doesn't work as you might think. It's not light itself, but its effect on our body clocks that matters. You need s…
- How might we build an education system that is centered on creating rather than replicating knowledge?
This question misframes the issue, and to understand why, you need to understand the history of how the creation/preservation tradeoff has been managed. The short answer to your question is that to …
- Will there be a tech sector crash in the near future?
For once I disagree with User-9918985937555143421 Or maybe I don't, and I am saying the same thing in a different way. I think the startup sector is being temporarily shielded from macroeconomic cond…
- Why are quadrotors used in autonomous vehicle experiments?
Robert Scoble has the first-order reasons down right. The second-order reasons are that in any hardware research, you simplify the things you don't care about, and complicate the things you want to i…
- What are things people should do at least once in their life?
Going for things that aren't likely to happen unless you set out to do them. There's plenty of must do stuff that you will do anyway Watch a total solar eclipseLook at the rings of Saturn, live throu…
- What should someone read to start learning about Buddhism? What books, blogs, podcasts, publications, etc. would you recommend?
At the risk of being unresponsive: don't try to read a book as your starting point. Go find a monastery, spend a day, talk to a monk, listen to a couple of discourses etc. Eat a meal or two. If you ca…
- How can Kolmogorov complexity be described in layman's terms?
Read Gregory Chaitin's "Meta Math" for a detailed and interesting popular treatment. The best way to understand it is as the most elegant, in the sense of shortest, computer program, that produces a …
- What's it like to be an entrepreneur in residence? What do you get to work on? How are compensation and incentives structured? What value does the VC firm get?
The idea of an EiR originated in the VC community I believe, and Michael Wolfe has covered that kind of EiR neatly. I have the EiR title in a big company (Xerox), where I am part of the innovation gr…
- Are libertarianism and solidarity incompatible?
The short answer is yes, they are incompatible. And it has nothing to do with political or economic philosophies. It has to do with psychology. Collectivism/individualism is not so much a moral choi…
- Is being open about your life online a turn off for prospective employers? Especially in creative/online industries?
If you've deliberately asked the question in this form to get broad ideas, answers like the one from Erica Friedman are good starting points. But if you genuinely think about this issue at this level…
- Will we ever see high quality TV programs with an à la carte business model? Is it possible for consumers, distributors, and content producers to all win with à la carte?
Your question is based on the premise that definitions of quality survive changes in media technology, they don't. Three examples: Lee de Forest, one of the (dubious) pioneers of radio, thought radi…
- What are some good ways to annoy very intelligent people?
Pretend to give them your undivided attention when they are holding forth passionately on something intellectual, like "existential Zen in post-revolutionary Iran," and then suddenly interrupt with on…
- Why should words matter to businesses and other organisations? What difference can well-chosen words make to their success?
I'll stick to the brands/branding subset of the question, since general perception management, which includes PR and sales and post-sales communications, is too complex to address in one answer. The …
- What is the most important trend that will impact the marketing industry in the next few years?
Increasing numbers of customers starting to think for themselves. The technology is a sideshow that will help both those who want to stick to traditional ideas and those who want to challenge them. …
- I am a 26 year old Computer Engineering graduate. I have applied to around 30-40 companies and all my job applications were rejected. I am hopeless and so fed up with my life. My CGPA is 3.5 out of 4.0. What shall I do?
Are you doing the basic no-brainer things that don't require permission? Participating in technical Q&A at Stack OverflowContributing to a couple of open-source communitiesMaintaining your own websit…
- Can blogs realistically produce investigative journalism?
Yes. I've kinda done it once, back before it was called "blogging." It was a story on activist efforts to protest a big dam project in Western India. Maybe not Pulitzer worthy, but decent enough. This…
- When did everyone start calling programmers "engineers"?
My theory is that the shift happened around the time OO programming became the norm. Or approximately the late 80s when C++ moved the idea from "lab esoterica" status (i.e. Smalltalk etc.) to "practic…
- How important is SEO for blogging?
Two words: Bounce rate. And thereby hangs a tale. The Baseline There's a baseline cost-of-doing-business SEO level that every site needs. That's a no-brainer in two ways: It's a no-brainer because…
- Would people think if they were not being paid to think?
It's the other way round. You have to pay people to NOT think. Left to themselves, with none of the typical workplace incentives, people perform better, not worse. Dan Pink has extensively profiled t…
- How are the children of rich people socialized into wealth? What behavior codes do they learn that signal their belonging to the wealthy class?
While not specifically about the socialization of children, the general theory of the social psychology of the wealthy basically explains most of what you see. The classic on this subject is Thostei…
- How many Social Media Gurus does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
The question is misframed. You need to use the Charlene Li/Josh Bernoff "POST" model for social design from Groundswell: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. You are starting with lightbulbs, the…
- What are some possible reasons that Google replaced Eric Schmidt with Larry Page as CEO?
Well, obviously everybody's figured out Google needs a vision for "Social Web Act II," since they so embarrassingly sat out the Act I. Unless they manage to change the game and make it not about "soc…
- Is it true that "managers do things right but leaders do the right things"?
I think Yishan Wong is dismissing the idea as a content-free clever turn of phrase too quickly. Partly his answer is a prescription rather than a description, and partly he's unconsciously added the a…
- What are the hot topics in marketing and branding at the moment?
Let me start with a little skit you can put on at your next all-hands meeting: Ad guy: "As John Wanamaker said, I know half of my advertising works; I just don't know which half, ha ha!" Google g…
- What is pivoting?
I am usually on the side of making fun of faddish terminology, but I think I'll come to the defense of the word here, since others are beating up on it to an unfair extent I think. "Pivot" does provi…
- Does computer science have a hidden agenda to kill religion?
I suspect the truth is exactly the opposite. The Internet has accelerated the digitization of religiosity. Religious groups are usually far better organized and able to take advantage of the Web than …
- How did people promote their blogs prior to social media becoming popular?
"Blogging" proper began with RSS. Which means they are part of social media. RSS fundamentally changes your marketing channel mix. Before RSS, the things you had didn't feel quite like blogging. I us…
- How much does ego and the desire to be recognized as an individual impede scientific progress?
It does not impede scientific progress. It accelerates it. You need to distinguish between 2 kinds of recognition-hunger though. The first is "acceptance and status" hunger. The kind that puts you on…
- What patterns of behavior have proven to be most helpful in knowledge transfer?
As Jeff Bezos once said, "The only way I know to transfer knowledge is to transfer people." This principle has been validated time and again. Move people, not bits. That's the top best behavior pa…
- Why is what the state says about marriage important to Western civilization?
Nothing particularly Western about it. The state can and SHOULD be concerned with the subject, far more than individuals. Our peculiar pattern of mostly-loyal pair bonding with occasional extremes o…
- How can I define my marketing agency's competitive advantage?
Nothing special about marketing agencies in particular. Competitive advantage is always to be found in the same few areas: Unique data: In marketing this might be unique segmentation data sets, like …
- What role should humor play in business-to-business marketing programs?
It should play a strong role in SMB to SMB B2B markets, and no role in big company to big company markets. Small-to-big is a toss up, but on balance I'd say "no" in either direction (big supplying sma…
- Is it a sign of weak character that I often (unconsciously) slip in to an accent that mimics the particular person I'm speaking to?
Yes, if you are doing it because you want to be accepted. No, if you are doing it to be comprehended. I modified my Indian accent just enough so I could avoid being misunderstood. This meant mainly …
- What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?
Not a scientific concept, but a philosophy of science concept that very few appreciate: The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is m…
- What factors led to the slower advancement of technology as a whole in North and South American cultures as compared to what was happening at the same time in Europe, Africa, and Asia?
Jared Diamond has the simplest and most compelling theory I have seen, in Guns, Germs and Steel. The lack of large draught animals mentioned by Robert Palermo is one of the elements in the larger pic…
- Are friends generally people who are like-minded?
Anecdotally, I have found that friendships seem to behave pretty much like marriages, and the same phenomenon has been well studied in marriage. So apply the idea below, mutatis mutandis. Be cautious …
- What is the first step in defining your online strategy?
The answer is: start by thinking of a name. Even in these days of mobile and apps, when it is possible to have an online presence without a central site, I believe a branded anchor website of some so…
- What is an iPad?
I like Alex Payne's take the best (bold highlights mine): http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad.... For years, me and thousands of other techies have been wondering what comes after the Personal Computer…
- What is the single most admirable and socially attractive trait that a person can have?
For me, no question about it: truth-oriented. Or slightly more accurately, doubt-oriented. To constantly strive to strip your mind of delusions and falsehoods, to keep groping towards deeper understa…
- Is an advanced degree desirable to pursue a career in marketing?
Whatever your personal goals are, if you want to be in marketing and you mean a marketing-related degree, the answer is a resounding NO at the moment (early 2011). The higher-education industry in t…
- What is the impact of information overload?
Look at the research from the Information Overload Research Group (IORG), a consortium-supported group that works on this seriously. http://iorgforum.org/ There is a lot of debate about how to defin…
- Is the feeling of love a physiological or biological reaction or something deeper?
It is biological, and exists in non-humans. The first famous (and famously cruel) demonstration of this was in experiments by Harry Harlow involving infant attachment to mothers in monkeys: http://en…
- Thirty years from now, will you and I be as clueless with technology as our parents are now?
The Bayesian Answer: With 23.8% probability, the answer is YES. Technology will remain comprehensible to humanity, but it won't be worth comprehending to those retired on nice beaches. So they won't.…
- Can the entire world's energy demands be met with 100% renewable energy and 0% coal, petroleum, nuclear?
No, not in any interesting medium-term scenario (50-100 years). Beyond that the future is so unpredictable (we may meet aliens, discover time travel or blow ourselves up....) that it is not interestin…
- Dropbox (product): Will the metaphor of files and folders become obsolete?
This is a fascinating question. Metaphors generally do not live on in their full complexity once the source domain has disappeared through obsolescence. For instance back during the Old West, horse/c…
- Are there any certifications for social media or small business consultants?
Social media and small business expertise are areas where, if you are not careful, obtaining and advertising "certifications" can hurt you more than they help you. Here's an anecdote illustrating how…
- Which city deserves to be the Capital of the World?
Damn, this is a frog-in-the-well set of answers we have here so far. Think GLOBAL people. This London vs. New York debate that is going on in the other answers is a joke. This is not like competing t…
- Must you be ruthless and selfish to be a really successful entrepreneur, and if so, why, and if not, why not?
To a degree, yes. But the word is "individualist" rather than "selfish." Able to think for yourself instead of constantly seeking validation, feedback and consensus. You can be a consensus-type CEO…
- Can there be such a thing as a transparent institution?
I'll take the (currently unpopular) position that a context that has no affordances for backroom dealings cannot add value at all. If true, sustainable value is being created, there is some secrecy go…
- Why is secrecy important to have a properly functioning government?
It is most useful to consider speed of action as a proxy for secrecy, and address the question of the need for secrecy in terms of the need for speed. The opposite of speed in governance is obviously…
- What are Hilbert Spaces in laymen's terms?
The simplest layman's explanation I can think of in terms of a counter-example. You know what a step is, right? Something that looks like, well, a step on a staircase. Now imagine a smooth ramp, lik…
- Mathematics is the best approximation to the truth that humans have invented. Can it be devised to hide the truth? Or is it inherently falseproof?
The answer to "can math be used to prove falsehoods" at a simple level is of course "yes, if you are talking to someone dumb who knows far less than you." But that's not interesting since that's basic…
- Which Arab countries dislike Israel and why?
It's not just Arabs disliking Israelis. That makes it sound like there is one basic line of conflict. It's everybody disliking everybody in ways that even they themselves are confused about. The rest …
- What questions are modern philosophers talking about?
"Serious" philosophy is alive and well. From what I hear, the latest trending areas are in ontology, metaphysics and the philosophy of language. Look up the bios of the younger faculty members in phil…
- What is it that holds groups together?
I think 99.9% of group cohesion actually derives from very primal social instincts that go back to much simpler species. Only about 0.1% of group cohesion is specifically human, and maybe only 0.05% i…
- Why are spreadsheet champions considered to be expert data analysts while computer science majors take a back seat?
Let me illustrate what's happening with an example. I have no skin in either the CS or data science games (I am a control theory guy with amateur yellow-belt status in both fields). A former manager h…
- How is a second-price (for single item) auction anything other than a subsidy from the seller to the buyer?
If you mean the sealed-bid second-price auction (Vickrey), I believe it has some optimality properties of theoretical interest. If you mean English or generalized second-price auctions, I have no ide…
- What are the differences between marketing and branding?
Drucker noted that the job of marketing is to make sales superfluous. I think that's still one of the best definitions of marketing around. Within that function, the job of the brand is to serve as t…
- What are some of the important historical, current and emerging "Interwebs"?
I don't like answering my own questions, but just to get the ball rolling, let me mention a few that got me thinking along these lines: Thanks to User-13743967034596023228 I just discovered tvtropes.…
- How do people who have a passion for everything settle on one thing?
Thanks for pointing this out. I missed this among Xianhang Zhang's posts. He's in good company. The answer to your question actually lies in Isaiah Berlin's Hedgehog-Fox distinction, riffing on the G…
- Are scholarly journals outdated? If so, what should replace them?
Journal publishing issues (no pun intended) are merely a symptom. The real problem is the professionalization of research. We need to re-amateurize inquiry. Research publishing started as a way to s…
- Is large-scale cultural change a prerequisite for political revolution?
This question assumes that there is an evolutionary historicist path of increasingly superior political systems starting with "Man in the state of nature" to "liberal democracy." I agree. I am just c…
- Is paid digital content making a comeback? In what form(s)?
I've been going back and forth over this, but I think, on the whole, not. A basic idea in pricing is that in an efficient market with competition, the price of the nth unit gets arbitrarily close to …
- Has anyone found a good way to kill business cards yet?
Ponder this video by a guy who thinks he has the best business card in the world. I couldn't believe this was serious, but apparently it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4... When technologies mat…
- What is the difference between Marketing 2.0 and Marketing 3.0?
Marketing 2.0 is a term used by reasonably smart people who understand that the 2.0 tag indicates that an idea/concept belongs in a broad mega-trend/evolutionary speciation event like the Cambrian exp…
- What careers or industries are the most meritocratic?
This question is deeply misguided. "Meritocratic" usually indicates some rigid and static notion of merit, usually based on testing/scales/numbers games in mature and professionalized domains. So high…
- Could humanity develop a planetary consciousness?
Short answer: no. I very much doubt it. Structurally, functionally and behaviorally, speaking, this is already weakly true and has been for about 10,000 years. You can attribute a certain amount of …
- What jobs chiefly consist in defining and interpreting the meaningful external reality for others?
For quite a while I used to think A. G. Lafley had it wrong. His original quote implicitly restricted this description to true leaders, i.e. ONLY the CEO. I felt that this task of connecting external…
- What is bureaucracy? How does it emerge in an organisation? What is its purpose?
The defenses of bureaucracies as "rational processes" being posted here are, I have to say, somewhere between disingenuous and naive. The cynics are right here, and are in fact underestimating things.…
- How should companies optimize their innovation mix?
I don't entirely agree with the premise in the question details that "many innovation strategies are proven effective." I think they are all equally ineffective, and innovation mostly happens in spit…
- Is the United States suffering from imperial overstretch?
Fareed Zakaria has a very interesting analysis of this question in his book, The Post-American World, which I am just finishing. The book was published before the recession and before Obama, but basic…
- Why does a number raised to the zeroth power equal one?
Of the mathematical explanations, I like Steve Denton 's best. But none of them is really an "explanation" in the sense that the question is asking for, I think. The question is looking for the "aha!"…
- Why do twenty- and thirty-somethings in the Bay Area and New York seem so proud of being unqualified to be caretakers?
I suspect this is related to the new developmental life phase called "emerging adulthood" posited by developmental psychologists: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/2... We’re in the thick of what one s…
- What are some classifications of stories?
I have far too much material and tons of links on this question, so rather then attempting to be exhaustive I'll list a few of the more representative approaches to classification, and provide google-…
- Why are companies always chasing growth?
I am surprised at the huge variety of answers and the assumption all around that it is a management choice. It is only a management choice for privately held companies that have no ambitions to go pub…
- Why do scientists tend to have liberal (progressive) views?
I think the answer is quite a subtle one, and is identical to the reason why great novelists, artists, comedians and poets also tend to lean progressive liberal. Progressive liberalism is associated …
- Why is it so acceptable to pet random cats and dogs, but not pet random humans?
User-13227694684444020075 is right. The right comparison is with babies, not adult humans, and the comparison is deeper than you think. It's a phenomenon called "paedomorphic cuteness" (yes, that's a …
- What are the biggest marketing challenges for universities?
The biggest challenge is going to be selling the idea that 4-year degrees are worth the ~$100,000 and debt burden they can cause. You cannot really sell the unsellable, so the industry will fail to me…
- What are some good ways to remain aware of the value of your time?
Well...there is a Ben Franklin type Poor Richard's Almanack view implicit in this question, based on a universal-utilitarian, time-value-of-money morality. So my answer is bracketed within a BIG (HUG…
- In science fiction film and television, why do the spacecraft move around in battle scenes as if they were subject to the rules of gravity, even though weightlessness means that the physics of movement are entirely different?
Because the damn studios are too cheap to hire aerospace engineers to create realistic AND interesting scenarios. Yes, it would be surreal, but we get used to all sorts of surreal things. As Colin Je…
- Assuming Charlie Sheen (actor)
Answering my own question here. Charlie disappears to Thailand, having eloped with Rose.Alan finds a letter from Charlie giving him the house.For a moment Alan tries to act sad and concerned that Cha…
- Philosophy of Science: If cosmology relies on mathematics so complex that only a few people understand it, how does it differ from theology?
This is a criticism commonly leveled against Superstring Theory and its approach to gravity. There are two books essentially accusing it of being theological rather than scientific in nature. I revie…
- Why has Airbnb not been sued or regulated out of existence by the agencies that regulate the hotel industry?
Am studying civics stuff for my citizenship test, and it seems to me that Yishan Wong's argument is actually specifically encoded in the 9th amendment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nin... This seems…
- When and how did creative accounting begin?
Interpreting the term broadly, I'll offer this origin myth. It was 15,000 BC. Zorg the caveman killed a deer one year, when the hunting was bad. Morg, the much taller and stronger chief of his trib…
- Is a machine learning a science or art?
Roar Nybø I am not entirely sure this is the same question as Why are spreadsheet champions considered to be expert data analysts while computer science majors take a back seat? That question was mor…
- What is the connection between population growth and the wealth of a nation?
I interviewed Rob Salkowitz (author of a few relevant books on this broad theme) a while back and we touched upon this, in relation to his latest book "Young World Rising" where he explicitly consider…
- Has Apple moved from making tools for creators to making devices for consumers?
I've quoted this article before in some other Apple related question. http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad.... This is why I say that the iPad is a cynical thing: Apple can’t – or won’t – conceive of a …
- Are there more Zero Sum or non Zero Sum games?
I believe both classes would be equal in size. The argument hinges on Euclidean spaces of all finite powers being basically the same infinity and equal to the real line. Take the simplest case, the n…
- What are the best simple games?
My absolute favorite simple game is probably Tetris. I use it as an extended metaphor for accumulation of entropy in decision-making processes in my book, Tempo. Many video games try to build in a "i…
- How can angel investment in DC be rapidly expanded in 2011?
Do something to make LivingSocial the anchor company. Blackboard and AOL are past their "sell by" dates as inspiration.Pick ONE university (AU, GW or Georgetown) to turn into the anchor university. I'…
- How far down the abstraction chain do you need to understand to be a "great" programmer?
Allen Cheung I think nailed it with "Having to leap "between the layers" of abstraction is pretty much counter to what it means for a software layer to be abstracted." To be a great programmer doing …
- Some startups never get the publicity they deserve. What can be done to obtain more exposure, especially in the critical start phase?
To quote Chester Karrass, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate. In this case, what you negotiate with is the "market." The spectacular products will get found no matter what, an…
- What discipline-specific principles help reframe activities so as to provide useful insights and/or improvement?
I assume the question is asking for principles that are literally applied within the disciplines not proverbs like "measure twice, cut once" (which isn't really a principle in tailoring) "Premature o…
- Are there any psychological benefits to religion or atheism, in terms of mental health and well-being?
As Lawrence Sinclair notes, research shows that religious people are happier. Many studies show this, so it is a very solid correlation. Details of various studies of happiness and well-being reveal…
- Booz's report on "The Rise of Generation C": how accurate are their timing projections?
My first reaction is that the center-piece of the prediction, a converged "PDD" (primary digital device) does not seem even remotely plausible, which makes the rest of the argument very suspect in my…
- What elements should a new Web development framework contain by default?
A combined user and topic model with switches for symmetric/asymmetric following and in-site messagingAn abstract class called "social object" where you can plug in the code for whatever yours is (vid…
- How could a newly-established university be designed today in order to be élite? Which features must be included, and which features can be left out?
I don't agree with Sam Gerstenzang's answer. All the factors he talks about come later. Elitism has almost nothing to do with organizational design, and everything to do with whether you have the righ…
- What industries and professions are still ruled by "good ol' boy" networks? Industries where it can be difficult to break in as a young person, or as anyone who doesn't "know the right people".
I like this article that gives you a snaposhot of how things work these days: http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz... What is more relevant to our times, though, is that the rich of today are also diffe…
- What are the best books on political theory?
My list is going to be highly idiosyncratic, since I am mainly an autodidact in this area. Sticking to core theory. Biographies, analytical histories, political economy texts etc. are all obviously im…
- Bob Dylan (musician): How does it feel to be on your own with no direction home?
I am going to interpret the question as being about free agency, and not being tied to a paycheck. That's the "on your own" part. I don't understand the "no direction home" part and never have. I've…
- What is the upper limit on the number of participants in a group for which goals, rules, roles and so on can reasonably be negotiated?
Complicated questions. We can dismiss one wrong answer straight away: it is NOT Dunbar's number (150). Nor will it be a single number at all (obviously) it will be a coordination complexity/group siz…
- Why do so many people want to go into management consulting?
Let me add a history+future note to the many excellent points raised here, both due to Walter Kiechel, author of Lords of Strategy. I will assume you mean "strategy consulting" here. Without that adje…
- Who are some academic iconoclasts?
Among more modern ones, I like: Jon Doyle and Elisha Sacks in AI, they certainly smashed some idols in "Prolegomena to Any Future Qualitative Physics." Fred Hoyle and his gang kept up a spirited def…
- Why is theoretical computer science so dry in jobs, except for the academia? Though every company is faced with challenges, there is no hard-fought war against tough problems, and people tend to choose the easy way around every problem.
This is like asking, "I really wanted to specialize in solving crossword puzzles, but everybody in the publishing industry is just focused on the 'easy' problems of writing articles and books." Theor…
- Why do some people think they are right just because they are older?
Because they often are. Ignore the strawman stuff about religion, evolution, race etc. Basically, anything to do with social truths and cultural attitudes can be ignored. Pay attention to what they …
- Can you buy human shares? Is there a mechanism to buy shares in individuals' future success? There are profiles of people, such as athletes, I would be very interested in joining risk and contributing my funds.
Many examples already exist, some less dramatic than others. A one-person corporation where the individual's personal brand/skills are the main asset is effectively a publicly traded person if he/she…
- What is the greatest transformation of our world that you have witnessed in your lifetime?
Jeez, absolutely no contest here. Transition from massive information scarcity to massive information surplus in just 20 years. In cognitive terms, this is like the fish->amphibians-> reptiles evolu…
- How did U.G. Krishnamurti lay the groundwork for a system which could enable one to destroy their concept of personal identity?
Interesting. I hadn't heard of him before. He seems to be more like the popular perception of J. Krishnamurthy than JK himself. From what little I know about him, JK was a case of "do as I say, not as…
- What are the most common failure modes of design by committee?
I'll just list the top 10 (not in order) without explanation. These are for healthy committees whose delegates are from basically aligned organizations that are not trying to actively destroy each oth…
- Why do conversations with influencers matter?
Yoda's 25 Laws of Influence A Force that you are immersed in, influence is.Disappear the Force does, if not exercised regularly it is.Strengthened for all, the Force is, if seal a deal any two people…
- What is the most underrated threat to modern society?
Status RED: Falling water tables and water scarcity across the worldThe allure of the American lifestyle, which is a huge burden on the planet when 300 million live it, and will cause utter collapse …
- How did the adoption of agriculture affect quality of life?
Extremely negatively. The reason is a subtle one, and best captured by the William James quote, "The progress from brute to man is characterized by nothing so much as by the decrease in frequency of…
- Did the advent of agriculture affect the conduct of warfare?
There definitely WAS warfare before agriculture, and non-agrarian patterns of conflict continued long after agriculture became the mainstream way of life. In fact, non-agrarian lifestyles are characte…
- What are some signs that you should be acting instead of reflecting?
I like the Dr. House/diagnostic medicine heuristic the best: you need to do something when you've squeezed all the possible intelligence out of the data you already have. Clay Bodine is making the eq…
- How can someone stay focused and not give in to peer pressure?
Nick Huber has a well-intentioned answer, but what little is known about these things tells a grimmer story. Peer pressure has deep roots. Society couldn't function without it. Why? To understand pe…
- What's the best way to select one out of several potential company names?
Read Al and Laura Ries, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. But who am I kidding. Despite my constant preaching, nobody takes naming seriously. They want to get it over with in an afternoon brainstorm…
- Why do businesses need to have a logo?
Does a baby need a recognizable face? Yes. A logo or wordmark, or both. I don't make a big distinction between the two because a wordmark without a logo is usually strongly stylized so it is recogniz…
- Is it better to be niched and a subject matter expert? Or, a generalist who knows a bit about a lot of things?
This is a highly unproductive framing in my experience. Depth/breadth besides being sterile and taxonomic in their approach to capabilities, are uselessly fuzzy and confused. It is useful for organiz…
- Why has the empowered employee predicted in the Cluetrain Manifesto not emerged?
tl;dr version: you can take the individual out of the hierarchy, but you cannot take the hierarchy out of the individual. To be honest, I never bought into the Cluetrain Manifesto to begin with. It w…
- PARC (company): Why did it take so long for Xerox's early 1970s computing developments to reach the mainstream?
Err... no, it didn't. It was astonishingly fast as these things go. It was the very speed of development that made it hard to get organized properly and get everything to market in-house. PARC was s…
- What aspect should you focus to make disruptive a startup for restaurant's online reservation, with social ideas?
User-13135008672097594132's answer covers the basic issue very well. I'd add: watch Gordon Ramsey's shows religiously to understand what's really important in running a good restaurant, and things lik…
- Why don't we have flying cars?
There have literally been DOZENS of working prototypes that solved the technical problem. You can see some of the more famous ones at air museums. Here's a picture of one I took at the Udvar-Hazy muse…
- What are examples of manipulation of consumers' choices?
Expensive brands are stocked at eye level. Cheap brands on lower shelves. See Paco Underhill's Why We Buy for a lot more examples at the retail level. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely has many ex…
- How do I gently discourage people from leaving me voicemail and instead encourage them to use text-based forms of communication (e.g. SMS, email, etc.)?
Why bother being gentle? Just make your voicemail message polite and brusque but unambiguous: "I rarely check voicemail or return calls. If you want an actual response, email me at blah." I've been m…
- Is Realpha a bad company name?
This is not a good name, and it's not a subjective opinion. It violates several empirically validated branding principles like making your name pronounceable in an obvious way, being tasteful about so…
- What's a cool name for my new custom wood furniture shop in New York City?
I wouldn't go for "clever" here. A small specialty retail store in a custom craft domain is best named after the lead crafts person or owner. You want something that has human-like reputation and cred…
- Can late-blooming developers ever catch up with the whiz-kids? If you didn't start programming until your 20s, can you pretty much forget about competing with these guys?
There may be empirical studies about this sort of thing, but I suspect the answer is no. Programming is similar to mathematics or chess. It is a young person's game. The age of peak achievement may v…
- What is the biggest problem with U.S. foreign relations with developing countries?
Probably the inability to give up the attitude usually known as "American Exceptionalism." The idea that there is one rule for everybody else, and one rule for America. This doesn't cause such a huge…
- What are the best strategies to move up quickly to senior management?
I'll assume this question is about getting to the C-suite in a large company and doing it well enough that you get featured in Fortune magazine etc. I guess I am notorious for promoting the view tha…
- Is Quora the future of blogging?
No, and the reason has nothing to do with technology or business strategy or trends or anything Quora can control. It has to do with the cognitive psychology of the medium. Blogging is not the message…
- Should a student finish college or go work for a startup if given the chance to work for a YC, TechStars alumni?
I am surprised at how narrowly utilitarian and instrumental (i.e. viewing college as a means to an end) all the answers have been so far. I am also willing to bet that a lot of people urging the drop-…
- Was it worth it to view a Space Shuttle launch in person?
I watched one of the rare night launches from a cruise ship. Easily one of the highlights of my life. Wouldn't trade it for anything. The night was overcase, and nothing seemed to happen as the laun…
- What does it cost to place a book at the front of Barnes & Noble?
Unless your name is "Malcolm Gladwell" or something, what you are asking is basically not possible. But a more limited thing is possible. First you need to get distribution via a channel that Barnes…
- What are some ideas for ways we can change American culture, to help people to consider science cool?
Trying to make something "cool" is an exercise in silliness. It's like certain kinds of Christian Rock, or state-sponsored inspirational movies like the ones by Goebbels in Nazi Germany. But this sil…
- What is a one sentence definition of "the cloud"?
I'll provide a working definition that's part of a broader analysis I am doing. This definition actually applies to any kind of infrastructure. A cloud is any piece of infrastructure that separates p…
- If you had a $1 million/unit budget to design the best baby stroller possible, what would it be?
I was asked to answer this question. I have no idea why. I have no kids, and don't plan on having any. But I don't actually dislike kids like some do, and do appreciate the fact that they'll be keepin…
- Is it hard to build, market, and maintain a web app that makes at least $1,000 a month for a single, skilled web developer?
This is a very interesting question, and the responses are very revealing. It is instantly clear who knows what they are talking about. My litmus test for sorting out those who have actually tried to…
- How well is NASA run?
That's the wrong question. Most of the problems with NASA can be traced to confused thinking at the political level. The agency is about as well-run as such an agency can be (a mix of operations wor…
- What does it mean to "keep" a customer?
I don't have a theory, but I have some interesting examples to ponder that suggest some key characteristics of "keeping" a customer (curiously, all B2B). I'll evolve this answer as I think/clarify the…
- For those who went to top-tier schools, is it more rude to answer directly when asked "What school did you go to/Where did you go to school?", or to instead name the city where the school is located? Why?
People who are answering "it is a simple question, just give a straight answer" are missing the social psychological subtleties. "Where did you go to school" rarely comes up as a direct question excep…
- What was the most consequential human decision ever made? By ‘decision’ I mean a specific situation where individual people made a conscious choice.
I think, strictly speaking, this is unknowable. But philosophically this type of question is very useful to ask, because it forces us to truly examine the idea of consequentiality of decisions. It is …
- How do you overcome the paralysis of inaction after experiencing multiple failures?
Seek solace and motivation in the bloody-minded, "nothing to lose" narrative. This is easier to demonstrate than to describe: watch the scene in Cool Hand Luke where he keeps getting beat down and ke…
- What are some studies on the effects of social proof on enjoyment?
In Mindless Eating, Brian Wasnick cites studies that show that people enjoy wine with expensive labels more than the same wine with cheap labels. Price is a sort of proxy for social proof.There was a …
- Are women more intuitive than men?
Mu. The question is misframed. There is no such thing as "general" intuition which can serve as the basis for such a comparison. There are only intuitions, plural. What's more, there is no fundament…
- What slang terms do different industries call their customers?
Fascinating question. Never thought about it. Reveals a lot about the world of buying. Somebody like Paco Underhill ("Why We Buy") should research this and write a book about it. Peter Baskerville ha…
- Given that the rich are so powerful, how did the masses ever win any battles at all?
In addition to the arguments offered by the other answers, it is important to note the implication of one fact: most "popular" revolutions are in fact led by members of the upper classes. In fact you…
- Can filing a patent application be a strategic disadvantage since one is inherently revealing their business model to competitors at the time of filing?
Yes, and this is a very deliberate decision for companies. At my former employer for instance, the internal review process for patent applications could recommend either a filing or retention of the i…
- What can I be doing on the business marketing side for my startup while my partner, a programmer, is still building a proof of concept of our product?
A "model" is not particularly useful, so you are NOT actually ahead. As the paraphrased military saying goes, no business model survives first contact with the market. All this stuff: "I have a full…
- Is consulting a way of outsourcing thinking?
This is a trite question in a way. All consulting IS some form of thinking-outsourcing. The reason this is NOT a trite question is that often what is really going on when it looks like the client is…
- Should internet access be considered a fundamental human right?
I am amused by the people who are using the argument that there are people who still don't have access to more "basic" rights. If it is at all possible, Internet access SHOULD be a basic right becaus…
- Is there a mechanical engineering analogue to "Hello World"? (or: What's a good starter project?)
First, one of the MOST useful things you can do to develop your mechanical engineering instincts is to look at classic mechanisms. The world's biggest collection is called the Realeaux collection at…
- Why are some people more ambitious to be rich than happy?
Happiness is not a particularly laudable goal, philosophically speaking. Nietzsche had only contempt for happiness-seeking. Pursuit of wealth is a flawed version of the pursuit to transform oneself t…
- Why do so many educated people today still believe in religion?
I have encountered five basic motivations among educated people (which I'll also interpret as smart/thoughtful, but disinclined to think too hard; best-case scenario), along with my estimated percenta…
- How do you come to terms with the fact that you're just ordinary?
This is a "be somebody" orientation. With this, even if you become the richest person in the world, win the Nobel in every category, cure cancer and bring about world peace, you'll still have the anxi…
- If we found a habitable planet and wanted to colonize it, what would be the most feasible approach?
Even if we don't assume a basic science breakthrough like hyperspace, warp drive or time travel, we still need at least big engineering paradigm shifts to get to even "not laughable" concepts. Fun sci…
- Is Airbnb's $1 billion valuation ridiculous? By my counts, they seem to have only done about $15-20M in revenue, yet are commanding a $1B+ valuation. They are growing quickly, but shouldn't the valuation have been in the low hundreds of millions?
It is very rare indeed that a Web startup has a clear and distinct impact on the mainstream world, shows clear evidence of a strong revenue stream and a big market disruption opportunity. I also used…
- How much should a small start up realistically set aside for UI design?
Since you are bootstrapped, I'll assume you plan to hit revenue on Day 1 and "profitability" in a lifestyle business sense at a very low acquisition bar like 2000 users. For a bootstrapped business, i…
- Has anything good come out of the Institute for Advanced Study?
The joke in academia is that the Institute destroys geniuses. All the great names associated with it did their best work before going there. That said, I believe Einstein and Godel did some interestin…
- What are the most sinister real-world conspiracies in history?
The takeover of Bengal by the East India Company in 1757. The main actors were Robert Clive, Amir Chand (Omichund), Mir Jafar, Nabakrishna Deb, Alivardi Khan and Siraj-ud-Daulah. I just wrote a blog …
- What is the best way of finding out whether a start up idea is worth spending time developing?
There are three key variables in this decision: Analysis of the idea itself, relative to other ideasEstimation of market demand, by any means necessaryIntrospection, individual and collective by the …
- What should I do if I have an unpronounceable name for most people?
My name is borderline that way. Mispronunciation doesn't bother me at all so long as I can understand when I am being called under normal ambient noise conditions. I expect the same latitude for erro…
- How can I break my sleeping pill habit and better treat my insomnia?
I used to suffer from severe insomnia 12-13 years ago. Medication didn't help. What did the trick for me was voluntarily quitting the pills, adopting much better "sleep hygiene" and slowly making life…
- Is Tristan Walker
It is very misleading to think that Foursquare "owns the brand around location." Location is an engineering aspect of certain products or services. It is not a market or customer experience in its own…
- What are the best comic books that have not yet been made into movies?
Two American super-heroes are quite popular in other parts of the world in syndication but don't seem to be popular in the US itself. One is the Phantom, and the other is Mandrake the Magician. http…
- What is the greatest achievement of Western civilization? What can Westerners be proud of in the global community?
By definition, "Western" suggests a contrast with "Eastern," and in that comparison and the very word "achievement" in the question, you can find the answer. I'll juxtapose "Western" against one major…
- Can war strategy ethically be translated into business strategy?
The other answers are missing the main point, which is the "ethically" bit. Without that, it is a tautology. Of course good ideas from one domain can always be applied in another if they are applicabl…
- Why is it that so many people today are unable to see or are unfamiliar with the true nature of reality?
There are three major assumptions in your question, that there is a true "nature of reality," that there are people who see it better than others (with you being one of them) and that it is useful to …
- How can mathematics be marketed better?
How would you market a deep immersion into Zen practice? A month-long retreat at a monastery? Take those ideas, and substitute math. Because that is what it is. A sort of spiritual practice. And trust…
- How does one market oneself as a Swami?
Roughly the same way popular preachers like Billy Graham establish themselves in America. Here's my lean-Swami startup formula. And yes, you do have to be Indian and Hindu, and start out IN India to w…
- Are there distinctly feminine and masculine values?
I forget the reference, but I read an evolutionary psychology argument somewhere that supports User and Margaret Clinton. Take it with a grain of salt, like all evolutionary psychology arguments. It i…
- What generic first order principles should a new technology project or startup follow?
Now this is what I call a competitive answer field. Hmm... I wonder if I can at least overtake Ashton Kutcher. Overtaking Naval Ravikant is probably out of the question. I'll stick to things that are…
- Why are so many graduate students disillusioned with graduate school/their advisor/etc.? Is it possible to predict how "nice" your advisor is ahead of time, by talking to the advisor's students? Couldn't you transfer advisors?
Because they never take ownership of their lives, and don't overcome cynicism enough to do what I call a "romantic PhD." Most often this is due to a too-strong attachment to the social/community life …
- The West sees South Asia's gender-selective abortions as a major issue. Does South Asia see it as a major issue as well?
I am not aware that it IS seen as a major issue here in the West. I've never seen any coverage of it in the mainstream news. In India, there is significantly more coverage. Or at least there was whi…
- How would I go about doing a new religion "startup?"
Starting a new religion from scratch would be very tough. Antiquity is the main source of legitimacy for religions. It takes at least 100 years for "lunatic cult" to get upgraded to "religion" for exa…
- What are some tips for advanced writers? How do you push your writing into "excellency" territory?
I just published a book and a friend, another book writer, privately complimented me on the "poetic grace" of my book. The comment made my day. So I'll take that as my claim to being an "medium advanc…
- Why hasn't technological improvement resulted in us working less?
A few interesting pieces of history may help here. Let me try to complement Gregory Rader's excellent economics-based answer with a historical one. Actually there WAS some reduction in work for some …
- What could a 20-year-old do to potentially improve their quality of life?
Your biggest asset is time. So the most valuable lesson for you concerns compound interest. Learn to appreciate the absolute centrality of compound interest in every major department of life. Every on…
- Should an artist get to decide or control how the viewer should view their work?
I was one of the polarizing respondents to the What's the best way to photograph food in a restaurant for blog posts? question, so I suppose I should respond to this one. I am actually more accommoda…
- What are some interesting personal manifestos?
I don't like the idea of a manifesto at all. Possibly because I am very suspicious of larger "save the world" visions in general. Most "personal" manifestos aren't really personal at all. They contain…
- Would the Hollywood studio system be improved if more (or any) philosophers were hired?
I am going to give a typically philosophical answer, but just to buy your patience for the process of philosophy, I'll give you a piece of low-hanging fruit. If you are planning to make a campy movie,…
- What is the best way to cope with having to work for a person who is completely incompetent?
Ethics note: these are amoral techniques below, and will likely deeply offend those who believe ends don't justify means or in concepts like "respect." They can be applied towards/against either you…
- What would it take to build a ladder in to outer space?
No, not with materials available today. And likely not with any conceivable material. The main reason is drag. The reason I say this is a much simpler concept that HAS been considered/tried, the idea…
- What are some great character names in fiction (e.g. novels, tv, film, etc.)? Choosing names for characters seems to be extremely hard to do well, since a well-chosen name can encapsulate the entire DNA of a culture. What makes them great?
Going slightly meta, (I posted the question), I learned the significance of character names from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World. It was one of the assigned sho…
- How do I re-frame a question on Quora?
I made the following remark in the comments to another Q&A, and Sean Hood asked that I repost it as an answer here. Here goes (with a couple of edits and a bit of expansion). Interesting conversation…
- Why might women have better handwriting (more readable, neater) than men in general?
I am not sure I buy Eva Glasrud's inferences from the research she cites. I am skeptical that this anecdotal neatness observation is actually true. I think context and personality are likely a far b…
- Is it immoral to play Medal of Honor
Err... no. After all, in war gaming, US military personnel routinely play they other side. In a very famous one for example, the Millennium War Games, Paul Van Riper, a marine Lt. Col., played comman…
- Are we on the verge of an entrepreneurial revolution?
I don't quite agree with User. We've mostly seen the pre-game show so far. The revolution proper is just getting started. The intellectual foundations haven't been laid completely yet. To understand t…
- What are tools to help one name a startup?
You really don't need tools beyond a basic whois service and a sense of the gestalt/fashion trends around naming. When you figure out the positioning, the naming and branding problem become fairly tr…
- Who would be good presenters at the HBS Entrepreneurship Conference on Nov 6, 2010?
I expect the usual suspects (Eric Ries Vivek Wadhwa, Steve Blank etc. from the lean startup movement) are already on the radar. Some unusual suspects you may want to consider if there is interest in…
- What are typical key performance indicators for a web product?
I assume you're familiar with Dave McClure's "Startup Metrics for Pirates"? If not, you should take a look. http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500... It's primary value is that it comes with the best bac…
- Why do restaurants have you pay after you've eaten vs. before you begin the meal?
The decision by a retailer to go with pay first/pay later models is only one small part of an overall pricing strategy/experience design problem that is generally called "yield rate management." Besid…
- What strategic role does sales play in product design and development?
This is far too general a question. The relationship between sales and product development induces a combinatorial explosion of possible situations that is vast enough that you can practically fingerp…
- If you were to offer users the choice of 900 hours of usage in a month for $14.95 OR unlimited usage in a month for $19.95, which would people pick?
This is a technical question on setting pricing breakpoints and there is no way to answer it without understanding what you are actually selling and gathering actual usage data. Use this rough approch…
- What can you cook with just a knife and one saucepan?
Let me share one of my own recipes. Rice-lentil porridge Get the papery stuff off an onion, chop off the non-root end and then cut a manhattan grid about 1 inch deep into the onion's circular face,…
- What is the best way to motivate oneself, when one is at the tail end of finishing a PhD?
Get over yourself. There's a point at which "passion for my own ideas" becomes a symptom of intellectual greed, lack of discipline or rationalization of some underlying fear. Methinks you protest too …
- What are prerequisites for a good understanding of a course in aerodynamics?
There is a macro-level subject that is unique to aerospace engineering which is usually called "aerodynamics" or "flight dynamics" and there is a more general micro-level one called "fluid and gas dyn…
- What makes for a great minimalist 80-20 food lifestyle?
Mine: Equipment Cutting board and knifeOne medium saucepan with lidOne griddle or frying pan, medium or largeOne large and one small mixing bowlOne spatulaOne ladleOne rolling pinTwo plates, two sp…
- How do I get my young daughters hooked on watching football?
It's a complex game with a complex subculture around it, so there should be something that plays to ANYONE'S strengths. So figure out their strengths and use them. You'll need to do it individually. N…
- Why are movie directors generally more visible and more renowned than screenwriters?
I used to write the scripts for class productions in high school and did quite a bit of acting and directing as well in amateur theater in college as an undergrad (geek admission, I was the "dramatics…
- Why do corporations die so much more frequently than universities?
It's a case of form following function. I'll ignore the formal structure of both, and consider the functional nature of the two types of organizations. Universities exist to preserve, perpetuate and…
- Do people from Turkey consider themselves to be Europeans or Asians and why? What does the rest of the world think about Turkey’s identity?
tl;dr answer: Asian. The question is almost entirely a religion question. There are 2 other candidate variables that might matter: genetics/looks and non-religious aspects of culture. I'll explain wh…
- How can atheists have meaningful moral opinions?
Umm... I'd say only atheists can have meaningful moral opinions. "Because god said it is a sin" is not a meaningful opinion. Religion takes the meaning out of morality. When religious people are thoug…
- People pay for graphic design, for web development, etc. so why do most people think they can do UX design on their own?
Because in many cases they can. Your question implies a definition of "real" UX professionals that you should probably clarify. Who do you mean? People with HCI degrees? Some sort of diploma? People …
- Maritime Piracy: Why are pirates so romanticized in popular culture?
To a certain extent they deserve to be romanticized. They are an archetype that represents individualism, statelessness and an illegible specter of Darwinian justice in a global court of natural law t…
- What is the literature that one should read in order to get a broad scientific background?
Your question and link suggest that you don't quite understand what you are asking for. The link is to "polymath" with Leonardo Da Vinci held up as an archetype. You are asking what to "read" to under…
- How crucial is cheap energy to future scientific and technological innovation?
In the medium term, cheap energy is ridiculously important for the simple reason that scientific and technological innovation rely on functioning civil societies to support them, generating enough of …
- What are the best ways to respond humbly when someone says that you're smart?
You need a triage. "Thanks" is usually enough for 80% of the cases that are prima facie best-faith and genuine compliments without ulterior motives. The other 20% requires a careful examination of …
- Why doesn’t the mind-body problem bother atheists?
The two are pretty much unrelated. This is like asking why worries about pink bunnies taking over the world don't keep physicists working on a unified field theory up at night. "God" is not a metaphy…
- Why does a chicken egg not break when pressed by its ends?
It's basic mechanical engineering and the same reason arches and domes don't collapse, and the reason why corrugated sheets can support more weight than flat ones. It WILL collapse if you press hard…
- What are the most fascinating known unknowns?
Excellent answers from the physical sciences. Let me add a few known unknowns from the humanities. These tend to be less clearly stated, but the following questions account for a big chunk of what I c…
- What are the right ways and wrong ways companies use strategic planning?
Strategic planning is an umbrella term under which companies do a LOT of things. There are no right or wrong ways to do it (excluding obviously dumb ways like using astrology or tea-leaf reading), the…
- What is the main cause of poverty?
The simplest answer is that it is a necessary companion to economic growth. Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto started this line of thinking in economics, and it continues strongly. http://en.wikipe…
- What would the ideal 2-night itinerary be for someone's first time in Las Vegas?
Recently moved here and am starting to get local instincts. Am assuming you have no special velvet rope access to the secret high-life of Vegas and are not a high-roller willing to drop 100k+ gambling…
- Would it be possible for the West to maintain its standard of living in a world with say, only half the population it has now?
Depends entirely on which half. Douglas Adams' A, B and C arks carried this thought experiment to interesting extremes. It was a clever plan to get rid of the most useless 1/3 of humanity, but it had…
- In which ways is the standard of living a function of population size?
At the lowest level, standard of living is simply species survivability, and I recall one excellent data point about that: the colonization of Australia by early humans. Back then the seas were lower …
- Will oDesk and mfg.com
I used to research this area extensively and led development of a marketplace product at Xerox. As part of this, I researched the space a lot, and got to know the CEO of oDesk, Gary Swart quite well. …
- Will Google+ Hangout significantly change the way we communicate?
I wrote that post in 2008 as you note. Since then, I've gotten a bit skeptical of the ambient presence idea since I haven't actually seen it catch on anywhere. Webcams never got that popular outside t…
- How do you combine tactics to form a strategy?
There are a few different ways of resolving the semantic confusion between the two words and none of them is entirely satisfying. Most are terrible and cause fatal confusions. This question reflects o…
- What benefits does one get from thinking really hard about the foundations of Artificial Intelligence?
I am not a Strong AI guy. So I think AI does not and cannot "explain" what Chalmers' calls the "Hard Problem of Consciousness." (HPoC) I also think HPoC is a more interesting problem than AI itself. …
- Who was specifically responsible for the invention of the "windows" GUI paradigm at Xerox PARC?
If you insist on assigning credit (a bad idea as I will explain) Alan Kay probably deserves much of the credit. You need to remember that the legendary-era PARC was a very collaborative environment w…
- History of Computing: What are the best resources to round out an education on Xerox PARC?
None. A better version of the story will never really be properly told in public because the organizations involved (Xerox, DARPA, Stanford, SRI, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, 3COM...) have perceptions to …
- Is society conditioning us to think that we have to have a job to get money?
First, I'll echo the others: people like Pavlina are not meant to be taken seriously. They are the web's equivalent of bad infomercials. Enjoy for camp value, and move on. Second, I'll answer quite l…
- What are strong indicators that someone new to a particular field has a lot of potential?
You have to distinguish strongly (I can't emphasize this enough) between evolutionary and revolutionary potential. For a young and growing field, the former kind of high-potential people are a lot mor…
- At age 20, why do I have this feeling like there's no more time left? How do I deal with it? Am I having a “quarter-life crisis”?
I have no idea why others are rushing to reassure you. I'll answer your main question instead of the question details which seems to be mainly about the problems of what is being called "emerging adu…
- What are the most interesting castles or palaces in the world? What makes them interesting?
In terms of candidates from India, people generally pick the pretty palaces/forts on the Rajasthan tourism trail. My personal favorites though, are less attractive forts that have more interesting s…
- What are some things to keep in mind when selecting a self-storage provider?
Main decision these days is pods vs. building units. Pods are more expensive, but if you anticipate uncertain and complicated multi-leg moves and need access throughout, they pay for themselves since …
- How will "Coasean growth" be measured?
I don't yet have a good idea, but Gregory Rader I think has taken a very important preliminary step in his recent post "Unifying the Value Universe." http://onthespiral.com/unifying-... Read the …
- Was Babylonian mathematics developed using Arabic numerals or Hindi numerals?
Without a library of original 7th-13th century manuscripts from India, Arabia and Europe to look at, it's hard to say what the actual written notation used to look like back then as the corpus of ma…
- Is violence bad? Why is it celebrated? For example, even the tame stories in popular culture, such as G rated Disney classics, often resolve conflicts with it and cheers follow. Or the dramatic celebration following the violent death of Bin Laden.
Good/bad does not apply. Violence is more fundamental than either. It is a property of the universe that precedes humans and even life itself. Calling it good or bad is like calling the law of gravity…
- Do people base their worth (social media--wise or personal) on how many followers they have?
I assume you mean psychological self-worth, not net-worth in a financial sense or something else. There is clearly no general answer. There are people who do, people who don't, and people who are som…
- What are the most epic fails in the history of the world?
From the weirder pages of Indian history, the hare-brained schemes of Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-1351), ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, are great examples of epic fails. His name is now a byword for gov…
- How historically common is it for societies to have a large middle class?
Extremely uncommon. The middle class is largely the creation of the industrial age and has existed mainly since the early 19th century. Arguably there were other short periods when a similar class exi…
- Why does there appear to be a profusion of self-styled "polymaths" on Quora? What aspects of life or work do polymaths believe allows them to include themselves in said group?
Apparently, I come across as one. I detest the term and don't believe it is a well-posed construct. People who call me that imagining they are giving me a compliment should be aware that I view it as …
- Why is the concept of time so important in Western culture?
Too complex to answer on Quora. Try Jeremy Rifkin's "Time Wars" (admittedly a left-liberal polemic) for a few good starting points. If you want deeper, heavier starting points, David Landes Revoluti…
- What celebrities—from movies, television, politics, sports or elsewhere—have best translated their fame into a web "following" of some kind? How did they do it?
A lot of them seem to have translated their offline fame into some sort of followership. In fact most who haven't could do so overnight, so it doesn't really mean much. Sure, some are more skillful th…
- Does Quora need to employ a full-time community manager, and if so, which job responsibilities would be appropriate?
I am very skeptical of the very notion of community manager. Whenever I hear people talking about it, it almost always sounds like a non-job description made up by self-styled social-media "experts" t…
- What is an interesting demonstration using basic tools to show air pressure or water pressure?
There are a couple of really good ones. Both are due to the Bernoulli effect. Kissing eggs: stick two pencils into a corkboard or something, about 2 inches apart, vertical. Get two relatively intact …
- How can you convince someone to abandon a deep-seated belief?
Ignoring easily falsifiable beliefs, obviously unfalsifiable ones and beliefs with no strong emotional content making them "deeply held," we are left with the tricky ones: complicated beliefs involvin…
- What is anecdotal empirical evidence?
tl;dr: Data is not the plural of anecdote. Both are valid. They are not mutually exclusive. Synthesizing them for a given situation is the act of modeling. Two of my posts may help, and one Quora an…
- How did people wake up on time before the invention of the alarm clock?
http://www.quora.com/How-did-people-wake-up-on-time-before-the-invention-of-the-alarm-clock/answer/Marc-Bodnick is pretty a good straight-up one. I'll add some additional context. Two good reference…
- Do authors have a (truly 100%) free place to sell ebooks?
To Katie Bremer's answer I'll add this: for ebooks, you need to distinguish between fulfilment channels and fulfilment+marketing channels. Fulfilment channels merely simplify things like shopping cart…
- How do you know when your online relationship is ready to move to real life?
I've done this sort of thing probably several dozen times so far. Your biggest concern, unfortunately, needs to be ensuring safety and overall pleasantness of encounters (awkwardness is okay and to be…
- Is psychohistory possible? Is it possible and useful to mathematically formalize human behavior on large scales to probabilistically predict the future?
I very strongly doubt it. The math involved in long-range predictive models simply doesn't work that way. Asimov wrote the books before the chaos theory field took off and the full nature of sensiti…
- Why didn't Google enter the smartphone, tablet, or laptop markets before their Nexus and Chrome OS devices were introduced?
Short answer: Google is respecting the historic "grain" of the industry. The computing industry has historically been horizontally rather than vertically integrated since the decline of Big Iron IBM …
- How can one make money starting a blog?
There are some basic confusions in this quesiton. Platforms like WordPress or Blogger do not pay. Ad schemes like AdSense do. "Skewed" is right. The median blog probably makes $0. There are plenty of…
- What advantages do restricted membership groups have over public open groups?
I like an idea I inferred from Geoffrey West's (Santa Fe researcher) recent work on cities vs. corporations: the more open a group is, the more likely it is to be long-lived or even effectively eterna…
- What were the most significant innovations in the history of politics? Why?
I am leaving out some basic ones that enabled things other than politics, such as language and trade. In rough chronological order: The basic protection-for-loyalty tradeFederation (alliances among s…
- Are people better at making observations, discoveries, and decisions if they remain neutral and impartial? Why or why not?
In a limited sense, yes. If you are talking about creative observations, decisions and discoveries in the sense of scientific work. A better phrase is "open minded." In negotiations for example, whe…
- Is verifiable success in a multi-level marketing or pyramid scheme considered good or bad in a candidate for a recruiting position?
I doubt it. One is predatory sales skills targeting the dumbest people you can find. The other is generally peer-to-peer or inferior-to-superior (social status wise) sales skills targeting the smartes…
- What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing, and what do we think we might see?
I assume you mean amateur astronomers, not the professional ones who pretty much program their computers to do the work these days and look at pictures later, rather than pressing their eyes against a…
- What caused India to fall so far behind technologically from its zenith in the 12th Century?
What do you get if you consider a Europe where Christ was born a prince in Rome in 563 BC, and if the Alps were much higher and a few hundred miles further north? You'd get India. The stories of Euro…
- Corporate Culture: Why do successful business people tend to use coarser language and speak more harshly of others than technical people in the same industry?
Technical work tends to be collaborative and non-zero sum. Business work, especially on the deal-making, negotiating front (sales, M&A, investing) tends to be competitive, Darwinian, zero-sum. If you…
- Which are better, the Harry Potter books or movies? Why?
In terms of literary quality, without a doubt it's the movies (ironic, huh?) In terms of just creating a maze-world for serious fans to get lost in, the books. These are the people who live on fanfic…
- Is it possible to out-design nature?
A very smart friend once described evolution, by analogy to software development, as "0% design, 100% QA" (quality assurance: bug detection and elimination). That's exactly correct. The process is …
- What is the simplest way to be calmer, to relax, and to reduce stress?
I may be an outlier here. I don't think actual relaxation is possible for the vast majority. Only band-aids. There's one solution, but it is a competitive one, so only a minority can enjoy it. Consc…
- Does a business opportunity exist to build an inverted anti-ad network to pay visible people NOT to promote a product?
The celebrities in question would have to be notorious/infamous with blackmailer mentalities, rather than ordinary celebrities. The closest example I can think of is the traditional transvestite comm…
- Personal Bankruptcy: What is it like to be secretly broke?
Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire is a pretty interesting exploration of that condition. People hang on to a given social class as long as they can, and long after the means to sustain…
- To what extent has Indian cinema proliferated throughout the world?
I'll preface this by saying I've gradually been losing touch with Indian cinema. I think I last watched an Indian movie almost a year ago. They are popular among non-Indians in parts of Africa, Centr…
- What are the best ways to monetize a food blog without filling it with ads?
My friend Eric Marcus runs vegan.com, which is a lifestyle blog that combines a food lifestyle with other aspects. I believe his primary revenue source is affiliate marketing for things like relevant …
- How do I become a better thinker? How do I actively cultivate the skill of thinking outside the box, drawing insights from disparate facts, and consistently discovering uncharted intellectual territory?
I just wrote a post on my blog trying to generalize some of my thoughts from that answer to other domains. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/0... Applying the ideas in the post to this question, you c…
- How would a society that focuses on growing Gross National Happiness look different from modern day American society?
Not very different. Reconstructing a feedback control loop requires that you change both what you measure and what you do with the feedback signal (actuation). Our big macroeconomic actuators: monetar…
- Why do people judge other people?
I am just reading Francis Fukuyama's excellent new book The Origins of Political Order. One of the things he does successfully is reframe classic "Man in the State of Nature" ideas (due to Hobbes and…
- What are the most promising disruptive innovations for the decade 2011-2020?
Modern basic science tends to take far longer to reach markets than it used to (~20-30 years at least), so if you are focusing on the next decade, basic science is not the place to look. You want to l…
- If it were possible to consume with zero environmental impact, would consumerism no longer pose a problem?
No. Environmental impact is not actually the most damaging effect of consumerism. The biggest damage is done to our psyches. Humans must fundamentally produce something of value (and I include pred…
- Given that "software is eating the world," what should non-technical people do? Organize to start a violent revolution? Re-train themselves?
I like the violent revolution idea actually :) More seriously, that's exactly what will happen if the software technology monster isn't tamed. It is a technology that's about 1000x more dangerous tha…
- How did long distance phone calls go from special occasions only to something we do without thinking?
It is probably purely a function of price drops. A minor factor may have been the emergence of the Internet as a way to stay in touch more intimately in the background as it were, which would make you…
- Why is the United States of America so much wealthier than other countries?
I am afraid I find most of the answers rather self-congratulatory and based on an amazingly limited context. The numbers in my answer below are rhetorical and metaphoric, not literal. We're talking a…
- Does praise feel less and less good as you get more and more of it?
For status-driven people, it is the source, not the amount that matters. It is a consumable, and you cannot accumulate it, since it depreciates in psychological value rapidly. Like rotting. So you can…
- What metrics would be good early leading indicators that well-educated nationals with valuable skills from other countries no longer see the US as the land of opportunity?
Most foreigners in the US, not counting those from unstable war-torn countries, are not really here for "opportunity" but quality of life. True opportunity-seekers are already mostly gone (or aren't e…
- Is China is preparing to dam the headwaters of the Brahmaputra and Sutlej rivers in Tibet, and re-route the flows into China?
I'll address this question, and also use it to riff a bit on India-China geopolitics, both for context, and also to help seed Quora with more international issues. From the Times of India, August 4t…
- What does it mean to "reinvent" yourself?
It is actually a fairly simple idea. I don't agree with Jeremy Liew that radical behavioral change is needed. People fundamentally don't change behaviors that are difficult to change. They change the…
- Economic Policy: What specific actions should be taken to lower the unemployment rate?
The answers to this related question might be helpful. There is significant emerging evidence that large segments of the middle class in the developed world will basically become unemployable soon, l…
- How did English become a so-called "universal language"?
It is an outcome of a complex of many causes that each appear to be minor, but together add up to an overwhelming advantage for English. I'd even remove the "second language" qualification. Weighting…
- What are the positive and negative manifestations of pride?
Are you proud to be somebody or are you proud that did something? Pride in who you are is generally a negative. Pride in what you do is generally a positive. It is easy to confuse the two. Getting …
- On what basis does a book publisher decide the selling price of a book they've just published?
At this stage in the maturity of the book industry, one factor dominates among the many mentioned by John Rose, "established or acceptable price range for book category." The industry is dominated mo…
- For which graduate programs does it make more sense to go immediately after undergrad?
Mathematics (or strongly mathematical subjects), music/fine arts and medicine are the only ones I can think of where it makes complete sense. Assuming you have the internal motivation. Most other fi…
- Can the US succeed in conquering Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union and British Empire have failed?
The political intractability of governing Afghanistan goes back to long before the Great Game, to the second or third millennium BC. There's a reason it's been called the graveyard of empires. At vari…
- Do I have bad writing habits that I should do something about?
Your strategy is going to get you more words, at the top of your ability, right now and next month. It is going to cause overall fewer words and lower quality over a lifetime. You are robbing your fut…
- Are jobs becoming obsolete?
By my estimate, jobs in the current sense will decine to about 40% of the workforce in America in about 20-25 years. Properly counted, I'd say they account for no more than 70% today. Many people get …
- Is interest in Quora waning? If so, what might be some of the reasons?
Interest is not waning. This is just a classic hype cycle effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyp... http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2008/1... Since this is a Web product, the hype cycle is exaggerated …
- What is going to be the future of online credits?
Fascinating question. The tricky part in predicting the course of this is that online credit schemes variously reflect both a transactional economy that supports a trade in informational goods of real…
- If the Internet and t.v.'s 24-hour news cycle had existed during the Great Depression, would it have ended sooner?
A faster news cycle doesn't necessarily mean more actual news. In fact much of today's news is repetition, dramatization and other random noise and fury signifying nothing. We have more programming ho…
- How did all American car manufacturing happen to get established in Michigan?
There are probably specific, contingent explanations based on unique conditions, local histories and biographies, but there are also some general spatial distribution patterns in the history of Americ…
- For what other reasons or reasons does inflation happen besides printing money?
Governments don't really "print money" anymore, though in theory they could. They do complicated things with bonds that I'll let the monetary policy types explain in their answers. These complicated t…
- What is Occupy Wall Street about?
A populist, vaguely anarcho-socialist movement to protest inequality, endorsed by the hacker group Anonymous (Hacktivist group). It seems to be inspired by the Arab Spring and the UK riots. AdBusters,…
- Why didn't Netflix retain (part of) their brand name when they split their company?
It was a courageous, by the book move, as far as the naming choices go. I don't know enough about the other things the company is getting criticized for, but if this approach to partitioning and repo…
- Why do people like to sit in cafes drinking coffee, using their computers, rather than just doing that at home?
Coffee, tea and alcohol in their social guises are best understood as examples of social objects (or more strictly, the central elements of broader rituals that are the social objects). They catalyze…
- Why is saying "I'm sorry" a sign of weakness to some?
I don't think I've ever encountered or observed a genuine apology in my life. So I have concluded the thing doesn't exist, and people don't like apologizing because they don't know what it actually me…
- Is Occupy Wall Street for real?
This is about as "real" as 9/11. What happened to world trade after the WTC was destroyed? Basically nothing. After a slight delay, business continued as usual. The markets absorbed and reacted to the…
- What moral traditions and values do we have in the U.S. that are unnecessary and outmoded?
I think this question is deeply misguided and a reflection of a very basic conceit on the part of progressives that there is an objective idea of modern/outdated that can be represented on an objectiv…
- If an apocalyptic event were to occur over the next 10-20 years, what shape is it most likely to take?
The top 5 in my subjective Bayesian order... A water-related conflict that escalates into a global-economy-disrupting "third world war" (in both senses of "third"). The violence may be limited to Asi…
- Does Quora's follow/following list qualify as a social network?
This is a question best answered with real data by someone like Stormy Shippy, based on how much Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Google+ graphs predict Quora graphs. I think Google+ is likely to be the most…
- Will Nandan Nilekani's effort to build an Indian biometric database succeed?
It just might. At least in the South, West and the Northwest (Punjab, Haryana) with the civic machinery to execute the idea with reasonable efficiency and acceptable levels of corruption. In what are…
- Corporations: Why do most companies use the Command-and-Control method of management?
It was the only game in town when communication technologies were primitive and expensive. When the cost per bit per hop is high, and the capital cost per direct link is also high, the optimal graph w…
- Is there any truth to the Ballmer Peak?
This is actually a comic exaggeration of a well-known principle in learning psychology called the Yerkes-Dodson law, which states that for optimal learning, you need a specific level of arousal -- not…
- Occupy Wall Street: With protestors calling for the arrests of negligent financial leaders responsible for the economic crisis, who specifically should be arrested, and why?
Unfortunately, the answer, in round numbers, is "nobody." Anything achievable within the letter of the law wouldn't be able to hit any of the real villains, or serve as a warning/deterrent to anyobody…
- Does Bollywood violate basic principles of good screenwriting?
Let's ignore the art house category (it's as good/bad as art house stuff elsewhere in the world). Let's also ignore genuine C-grade movies made for provincial markets (this category is sort of equival…
- When a failure to communicate happens, when is it the sender's fault, and when is it the receiver's fault?
My theory of communication is based on Wiio's law: all communication fails, except by accident. As you might expect, I've written a long-winded post about it. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/0... I d…
- What are Venkatesh Rao
I am afraid my list will be mostly useless for non-Indians and redundant/contentious for Indians. My favorites are the ones that require either a near-native comprehension of Hindi (because much of …
- What is the simplest, most convincing explanation of the solution to the Monty Hall problem?
Personally I find the second approach mentioned by Henry Robinson works the best to convince me that the right answer is to switch (the large numbers case). It still isn't conceptually satisfying to …
- How do I strike the balance between confidence and arrogance?
Fascinating question. I don't think "balance" is a meaningful concept here. Arrogance is an overload on confidence that is appropriate in some situations. What you want to guard against is inappropria…
- Is Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan smart economics?
No. The numbers are too low, too equal and miss the whole point of tax law design. I don't know the exact rate/yield curve for the US economy (basically, up to a point tax revenues increase with tax l…
- Why do many Americans think that healthcare is not a right for its own taxpaying citizens, and should it not be considered as, or more, important by the American public than is education?
Because logically, it isn't. Nothing that takes scarce resources to provide can ever really be a "right" in the sense of "right to speech" or "right to religious beliefs." Those are rights that cost n…
- What would a moral nihilist say about The Holocaust?
Moral nihilists deny the meaningfulness of categories like good and evil. That does not mean they necessarily deny the reality of pain and suffering or condone acts that cause pain and suffering. Pa…
- What do link-sharing sites represent within the larger social milieu?
I can only speak to the blogger POV and extrapolate to the "broader social milieu" from there. The advantage of the POV is that you get a broad look at all the services and can compare them. The disa…
- What are some memorable experiences/personal transformations people have had in mechanical engineering workshops?
I'll answer my own question here. My experiences building stuff with my own hands (outside of routine home repairs, Ikea-level assembly etc.) are the following: A fairly complex model glider in airpl…
- What would the ideal web technology start-up team be composed of in terms of positions, skills sets, personalities, knowledge base, and experience?
There is an interesting pattern I've noticed: there is a whole lot more diversity of "types" in the successful bootstrapped teams I've met (that eschew traditional investment models) than in the VC f…
- Should 99% of the American people protest by closing their bank and financial service accounts and instead join non-profit credit unions?
It's people, not labels. It is dangerous to correlate "evil people" with a specific subset of institutions and using institution-level balance of power ideas to effect changes in how power is distribu…
- What are the next hard engineering problems that currently resist commoditization?
Paperwork. Screw Siri. I don't need a personal assistant to tell me where to find the nearest pizza place or move my appointments. I am perfectly happy with my productivity on those fronts. I want a p…
- Are U.S. businesses not creating jobs because of policy uncertainty?
I very much doubt it. User-9918985937555143421 has provided a couple of theoretical reasons why this might be true, but I haven't actually met any business owners or HR decision-makers who think this …
- Is consciousness an emergent property of the brain or a fundamental property of matter? Isn't saying that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain just as much a non-explanation as saying it is a fundamental property of all matter?
This is a false dichotomy. It is like asking "is bird flight an emergent property of avian biology or a fundamental property of fluid and gas dynamics in a gravitational field?" Consciousness (in the…
- How many neurons are needed to create a conscious entity? What's the minimum number of neurons to trigger that consciousness?
Sorry, we cannot "define a conscious being as one that is aware (if not perceptive) of both itself and it's surroundings." You've got to distinguish (if not define) consciousness, awareness and perc…
- Is everyone's experience of color the same?
Most answers here seem to be about the neuroscience and psychology of color perception and measurable behavioral differences (across gender or language for instance). This is not the question as it i…
- Why is e-commerce such a hot area in venture capital now?
For once I have a much shorter answer than most. E-Commerce is hot because investors smell blood. As in big-retail blood. As in spilled by swarms of local-brand small businesses thanks to the Group…
- If my vegetarian/vegan roommate doesn't want to use kitchen supplies with which meat is prepared and made, who should pay for the new stuff?
As a vegetarian, and near-vegan who has been in this situation, I'd expect to be the one buying/maintaining veggie-exclusive equipment. That's what I've done. Where possible vegetarians/vegans try the…
- Why is so much of Silicon Valley obsessed with small ideas that don't solve a problem?
It isn't your implicit value judgment that is wrong. It is your assumption that "The truth is that it's not that hard to get into commercialization of more complex technology if you're willing to inve…
- Why does the pro-life movement insist on forcing pregnant mothers who do not want babies to have them?
You're trying to perversely get to the logic of the pro-life position from the foundational assumptions of the pro-choice movement. If that could be done there would be no debate. So I am afraid you…
- What are the best ways for one to make one's cat morbidly obese?
I have one obese cat and one overweight cat. It's not hard. Get 2 cats with conflicting feeding styles, open-feed them dry cat food, don't play with them too much. I ended up in this trifecta situatio…
- Is it really possible to make your own luck?
"For example, when I came to Bell Labs, I shared an office for a while with Shannon. At the same time he was doing information theory, I was doing coding theory. It is suspicious that the two of us di…
- What do I do now that I am rich? I made seven figures last year, which is not that rich, but rich never the less. What should I do with it?
This may sound counter-intuitive, but unless you want to lose all your friends, DON'T start handing it around freely via gifts, easy loans or friendly "investments." Those are among the fastest ways k…
- Has anyone been offered a job because of their Quora participation?
No jobs, but 2 consulting gigs (both about 6 months ago) and one writing gig. I get a fair amount of backchannel messages from people who just want to strike up a conversation or asking for private ad…
- What are some examples of great UX for reservations and scheduling online?
I think timebridge does a pretty good job with its UI to schedule multiple people with multiple options/constraints. The basic matrix grid calendar with toggle between day/week/month is kinda like th…
- Why don't the majority of voters choose candidates who appear logical and honest with the American public?
Insane eras need insane politicians with insane agendas to make any progress at all in today's gridlocked political process. In an actual physical gridlock, which of the Lethal Weapon cops would you w…
- Is it ever "too late" to significantly improve one's understanding of, and problem-solving skills in, mathematics (/physics/computer science), or a point after which it may become much more difficult?
There is good news and bad news for you. Since the question poster originally mentioned s/he was in high school, I'll try to focus at that level (you should mention that point in the question details)…
- What is a good definition of "Forget You Money" in 2011?
Answering my own question, in the US, the last reasonable argument I heard (I've lost the link) computed about $4 million as a reasonable amount to shoot for if you want to retire early into a relativ…
- What are some possible benefits of keeping ALL of your math/physics scratch paper?
I kept about 6 years worth of scratch paper in about a dozen 3-ring binders for about 6 years after the last one (I moved to a job with less need for hands-on technical work). Apart from numbering, pe…
- How is the work environment changing to reflect the growing freelance economy?
This is not a particularly new question. It's been extensively researched. The "boom" in the sense of people voluntarily adopting this lifestyle is kinda over. The peak was a couple of years back. In …
- Is Complex Analysis relevant to Machine Learning?
Learning models in control theory (adaptive control) are usually based on transfer function representations. In one way or another, these are about locating the unknown poles and zeroes of a transfer …
- If you had to pick one, what is the single most important subject everyone should know, beyond "core" subjects taught in the early years? Please don't answer with "core" subjects like reading, writing, basic math, science, and history.
The answers by Mark Eichenlaub, Walter Plinge, Fred Landis and User-13209674370931937457 contain interesting proposals (data, philosophy of science, current affairs, economics) but all suffer the prob…
- Why was the twenty paise Indian coin unpopular?
This doesn't show the later aluminum hexagon that was reasonably commonly used. The basic reason is inflation. When I was a kid, you'd still occasionally find 1 paisa coins (quite exciting). 5p, 10p …
- What are some strange/unusual but delicious sandwiches?
Any kind of sandwich but with different kinds of bread slices on top and bottom. Eg. white+wheat, ciabatta+sourdough, bagel+kaiser roll, English crustless tea-sandwich-white+pumpernickel... The filli…
- What are some lifestyle changes that save money?
Been doing a lot of this lately. 1. Move to a cheaper city if you're renting and have the mobility. HUGE impact. 2. Learn to do small repairs. Can be quite entertaining in a MacGyverish way. 3. Spa…
- From a historical perspective, how do the accomplishments of science compare to those of religion?
I recently learned the terms appreciative knowledge vs. manipulative knowledge (due to John Friedmann: http://books.google.com/books?id...). One allows you to form mental models of the world ("appre…
- What is the main reason for Second Life's failure to meet industry and media expectations made during its 2006-2007 hype era?
First mover disadvantage. It's the Friendster of the space. The winnings tend to go to the second or third entrant after the first mover figures out the risks the hard way. When I joined sometime i…
- Why wasn't Dippin Dots a success?
Once the novelty faded, it needed innovative marketing, spinoffs and aggressive positioning. After all Pringles pulled it off, so clearly not impossible to create enduring brands based on such things.…
- How is technocracy better than democracy when people with right skills are put up at the right place?
Politicians siphon off wealth in every political system. They are wealth extraction specialists. That is a non-issue, it is an unavoidable consequence of the principal-agent effect that is created whe…
- What privileges provide unspoken advantages in American culture, and what kinds of advantages are associated with each privilege?
I'll ignore the well-known ones based on race/gender etc. Some less-known ones: Extrovert privilege: being an extrovert is much more useful in America than in other cultures, since sociable self-prom…
- Why do some planes average the inputs of the two pilots' controls?
I suspect nobody on the flight control system design team thought of this scenario: two pilots communicating so badly that they had the stick at opposite extremes. Missing probable scenarios in contr…
- What should I do if I feel guilty about my parents paying $50k a year to send me to college? I could potentially transfer to a less expensive school or skip college altogether.
Guilt is a sign that you are internalizing others' expectations as your own and have doubts about living up to them. As a thought experiment, if you didn't have parents paying, but at 18 had won a lot…
- Is the "right to die" a human right?
My direct experience here is limited to signing off on euthanizing a cat. It was gut wrenching to do that, but there was never a single doubt in my head that it was the right thing to do. My cat's qua…
- If vertical describes up-down & horizontal describes left-right, what word describes near-far?
The correct answer (nah, this is not a subjective question) is "temporal" but the explanation is involved. ***gulps some vodka and settles in*** Your question is conflating distance, direction and …
- Why is advice largely useless?
Confirmation bias is my candidate for the top reason. People who succeed (and are most likely to offer "advice") make up idiotic reasons for why they succeeded, mostly discounting the role of luck, an…
- What are the best math tips? Are there any shortcuts or alternative methods for remembering formulas that can help with mathematical challenges in daily life?
There's an entire book of math hacks invented by a concentration camp survivor, the Trachtenberg System. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tra... A simple hack, the first one I learned, is that you can g…
- Are some academic departments more laid-back than others? What factors influence this?
I have this theory that the degree to which a department is actually laid back is inversely proportionate to the degree to which it appears laid back. The superficial things: people dressing more info…
- Why does a deck of cards, fresh out of the box, have a lower entropy than the same deck after it is shuffled?
It is more useful to think of this in terms of Kolmogorov Complexity, which finesses the problem of defining macrostates, which is ambiguous, as Anon User says. The question to ask is: what is the sho…
- Why isn't there a legitimate "critic" in Silicon Valley for early-stage startups? Why isn't this role filled in such a dynamic environment? Is there little incentive to critique companies that are so young?
Silicon Valley has the critical feature of any bubble: near-complete control over it's own internal discourses and readymade mechanisms with which to discredit external ones. The first purpose of suc…
- How should a white person deal with 'white guilt'?
I have no idea why I was asked to answer this. But I'll give it a shot. If you aren't directly complicit in oppression, drop the guilt. Not your fault.If you enjoy some inherited privilege, it's in y…
- How can we make open government work better for every American?
There is a brilliant series of episodes in the 80s britcom, Yes, Minister, on the "open government" theme. The cynical conclusion was that making information more open merely results in people turning…
- What is the best way for me, as a freelancer, to start an agency?
Test-drive potential partners, one at a time, over at least 2-3 gigs each. When you get to 4-5 good potential partners, start thinking about which triangle of 3 (one being you, 2 from your pool) woul…
- Could atheism be described as an application of anarchistic principles to religion?
No, it is the application of parental indulgence principles towards their kids' play fantasies, to certain patterns of adult play. As all parents know (though I am not one), toys to fuel fantasy pla…
- What is the greatest appeal of learning a foreign language?
For me, the appeal lies in being able to sustain multiple personalities without being certified and thrown into an asylum. It's the same kind of appeal as role playing. Especially if you are good enou…
- What is the optimal length of a single lecture?
I forget the source, but I recall one study that found 22 minutes to be the optimal time at which point the majority of people start losing the narrative. It's hard to measure because "lecture" is an…
- Why is symmetry such a prominent aspect of the universe?
Most of fundamental physics (possibly all of it, I wouldn't know, you'd have to ask people like Jay Wacker) can be described in terms of symmetries and symmetry-breaking. Symmetry is a measure of inf…
- What problem(s) does Apple's App Store solve?
"What problem does it solve" is typically the question asked to motivate conscious attempts at disruption using something like the lean startup methodology. Usually this means looking for a category o…
- What do you do when your company is over the hill in its field?
From the point of view employees, what you should do is abandon ship and look for a new job before you're forced to. From the point of view of executives and shareholders: it's almost always too late…
- What's a good strategy for ensuring that a trollish and factually incorrect, yet popular, Quora answer gets sufficiently voted down?
Write a better answer (in terms of both substance and rhetoric) and call out the other answer politely, but firmly on its bullshit. Then tweet/share your answer on Facebook. If you've got decent netwo…
- Market Sizing: How many new products are launched every year?
This is a fascinating question that I've been obsessing over for a while as well. A friend and I even talked of creating a small market-sizing app to address this question, among others, but we haven'…
- How can I tell if my boss is interviewing for other jobs?
Look out for signs of positive disengagement. Not apathy, but a generally positive, supportive, encouraging attitude towards everything without any substantial engagement in the content of anything. A…
- If the US goes to war with China, would all Chinese people in the US be put into internment camps?
Obviously a troll question, and generally I ignore such obvious provocation, but when there is silliness on one end and people laying down their lives at the other end... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…
- Has Quora lost its way?
I sent my reactions to one of the Quora team members privately. In it, I noted "lost its way" as one of the two possibilities, the less likely one. The more likely possibility is that Quora is at a …
- Do book lovers look down on non-readers, i.e., do readers assume that those who do or have not know less, have closed minds, and are generally uninteresting people, why or why not?
Somebody recently said that reading books has now once again become a very specialized activity, the way it once was. I didn't like the argument initially. After all, reading a 50,000-word book does…
- What are the best IITs / Indian Institute of Technology campuses?
Physically, Madras is the nicest. Food-wise Kanpur. Kharagpur is ugly and in the middle of nowhere. Bombay (my alma mater, 1993-97, BTech, Mech) is in arguably the best city, but the campus is just ok…
- What are alternative theories to Darwinian evolution that explain our observations in biology?
Shan Kothari's answer is excellent. I'll just add one point to it. Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute has been trying to come up with such a theory for a couple of decades now. See At Home in …
- What popular startup advice is plain wrong?
In its general form, as everybody here has pointed out, the question is ill-posed. Truly "plain wrong" general advice doesn't exist because you can always find a percentage of startups for which that …
- Choice and Choices: What is the best way to order a list of options for a decision if you are optimizing for the satisfaction of the decider?
If your confidence in your prediction (either predicted #1 preference, or a complete predicted ordering) is low I would suggest a pseudo-randomized list, where the best and worst options are inserted …
- Does the existence of labor barter systems like "hour exchange" suggest that the minimum wage and other barriers to commerce are too high?
The minimum wage is not a barrier to commerce. It is a barrier to certain models of labor organization. Changing the specific number makes that model more or less competitive with respect to other mod…
- Why do we respond so well to the hero's journey structure of storytelling?
The archetypes (except for the Hero) are actually not that important. Archetypes like the Trickster, Threshold Guardian etc. are kinda window dressing on the main idea of a Guy Going Somewhere. The sp…
- Do non-Americans on Quora feel marginalized?
This question is strictly unanswerable on Quora. You have to ask people who've left Quora or took a look and decided not to participate. You can discount the non-American answers here because they've …
- At what point does the work you have built become a bona-fide startup? Where's the tipping point?
When you quit other money-making activities to focus exclusively on said project with an "exit or bust" leap of faith. Until then, you're not burn-bridges committed. This is the industry standard in …
- Is Peter Thiel right when he said in a speech at Harvard Business School that discouraging students from pursuing humanities majors will encourage technological progress? Is this really a solution? Is it feasible?
No. Knowledge is not a zero-sum game. A brain gained by the liberal arts is not a brain drained from engineering. Pursued with honesty and intellectual rigor, the humanities and liberal arts can vastl…
- Why is the Hindu avatar Krishna so popular?
Therein lies a very complex historical tale. A major clue is in this popular verse: ekam sastram devaki-putra-gitameko devo devaki-putra eva eko mantras tasya namani yani karmapy ekam tasya devasya s…
- Why do many people still use Excel as a pseudo "database"?
The premise is misguided. A spreadsheet is not a bad 'pseudo-database' anymore than a database is a bad 'pseudo spreadsheet.' One is a workspace for humans, the other is a store for programmatic mani…
- Was the East India Company an elaborate ruse to further the colonising ambitions of the British Empire?
See Nick Robins' The Corporation that Changed the World. The EIC was more a band of adventurers with broad goals and considerable autonomy to deliver returns to a beast nobody really understood back …
- What are the elements of successful cultures?
A successful culture is not the same as a better culture. American consumerism is a very successful culture. Not even Americans argue that the McDonaldization of the world is a particularly good thing…
- What are the best ways to "evangelize" about math to people who don't like the subject?
Make 'em jealous. Surreptitiously engineer a contest with some serious prizes that look like they could be won by anybody, but contain serious hidden advantages for people with math training. Then mak…
- Is Y Combinator seriously disrupting the VC industry or has it just found itself a niche?
As with all such pipeline relationships, there is a tension between YC and Super Angel world on the one hand and the VC world on the other hand. In business there are rarely outright wars down a verti…
- How difficult is rocket science?
Not very. It's a very mature discipline so most of the difficult stuff is now documented and coded into design software. The action has now shifted to economics, AI, robotics, regulatory crap, materia…
- What will the big trends be after social and mobile?
It will start with the Apple iFab in 2017. It will be a little brushed-aluminum box with a clear hard-glass top that has both a touch display and transparency to see what's beneath. You'll log on to …
- Why are most hipsters so skinny?
This seems to be a surprisingly rich question for logical analysis. Most people are being whimsical or begging the question. The three logically sound answers are (if I may summarize) Jack Lion Heart…
- I am in a fighter jet, and I need to shoot down another fighter jet. How can I calculate how to do this?
The modern theory of fighter combat is based on energy. It's called energy-maneuverability theory and a lot of it has been systematized. The work was done by John Boyd, flight instructor at Nellis, in…
- How does the behavior of consumers in India differ from that of consumers in the US or Europe?
Low brand-consciousness, much higher price sensitivity and much more likely to do a lot of DIY repair and maintenance and keep things working with a lot of patched-up repair. That's the traditional m…
- How does a startup handle enterprise sales?
1. It's slow: the sales cycle can be 12-18 months even if the amounts are not in the millions. Make sure you have cash reserves to stay in the game. 2. It's a shifting situation. Re-orgs and new ass…
- Why are $1 coins not regularly used in the United States?
I think there has been one GAO study on this. There are two main opposed lobbies: I believe: the Coin Coalition, which includes industries like vending machines, which wants the coins, and the Save th…
- What is it like to attend an IITs as an undergraduate student?
IIT Bombay (93-97) was a very idyllic time for me. I haven't really thought about it at all since I left, but reflecting on my time there with the benefit of distance is interesting. I had fun writing…
- What does it feel like to have no friends?
That's not a good definition of 'friend' but if you insist on it, I'd qualify. I have a handful of people I consider friends by my definition, but nobody I'd truly confide in at a non-trivial depth ab…
- For marketing consultants and agencies, what are the most in-demand marketing services right now?
Above low-level and well-defined things, or things that require industrial-style scaling, marketing consulting game is trust/relationship based, not activity based. People seem to figure out who to wo…
- Knowing what you know now, would you still get a PhD if you had the chance to go back and do it over again? Why or why not?
Probably, but it's hard to say without reference to a specific believable alternative reality. The only thing I can think of that I'd have traded it for is an opportunity to make serious money (as in,…
- What are some job opportunities for a math graduate?
Clarify the kind of math. Opportunities differ wildly based on that. In the meantime, here's a quick breadth-first laundry list of possibilities, in no particular order. Statistics and probability: …
- When you learn that in community sometimes up to 25 people live in a house together, what questions come to mind about how they live?
Having lived in a couple, the things that are most relevant that you generally can't read until you actually move in there are: What are the sexual dynamics/politics of the place? They always exist, …
- Should startups be transparent about usage metrics? Why or why not?
No. Usage data is an asset that may be part of your competitive advantage. Like any other cards you hold, you need to think carefully about how you reveal it, to whom, and in return for what. Investo…
- What are some of the most shocking revelations from profound university research projects on human study?
A longer list along the lines of Colin Gerber's answer. My favorite is the Robbers Cave experiment which replicated the conditions of Golding's Lord of the Flies, and validated his literary intuitions…
- Are there domains where academia arguably lags the wider world, instead of leading?
Most of the humanities and liberal arts. Here practicing creatives make the raw material 2-3 decades before academia provides a meaningful account of it. Academics who try to stay on the edge are gene…
- What is the first word that comes to mind when you hear this term: "Social Media"?
Like Stephanie V, the primary connotation is "douchebag" for me. The only people who seem to need a term for the technology set ("social media") is douchebags who are outside it trying to figure out h…
- What are the best words or phrases you've coined or believe you did?
I coin a lot of words/phrases in my writing. It's pretty much my main schtick, and I get a big kick out of it. I've done it enough that I am thinking of putting up a glossary page on my blog. My pers…
- Is capitalism a zero-sum game? Does the rich getting richer somehow mean that the poor get poorer?
Depends on whether the economy is currently in a more mercantilist (or Adam Smithian) mode or Joseph Schumpeterian mode:If there is very little creative destruction going on, it is zero-sum.If not, it…
- How does lobbying work? Does lobbying equate to bribery?
Lobbying is not bribery for exactly the same reason cops or soldiers killing others in the course of their work is not murder. In government by consent, via an implicit social contract, we let the re…
- Are you influenced by any of the "top ten influencers in social media" according to Forbes?
No. Besides Scoble (first-to-market gadget test-drives) I have no idea what the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of any of the others is. The names of Brogan and Vaynerchuck are familiar, but I am onl…
- What is the best way to get clients in the door?
My favorite example of feet-in-the-door tactics is Wall Drugs of South Dakota. It started out as a tiny drugstore in the middle of nowhere, but near a major highway. They put up signs all over the app…
- Should Apple buy Hollywood?
As other Q&A threads on this theme have concluded, this whole "Kill Hollywood" meme doing the rounds in Silicon Valley says a whole lot more about the hubris and complete misunderstanding of film-maki…
- Will the iPhone be viewed as historically important, and if so, to what degree in comparison to other inventions of historical significance?
I think it will be viewed as extremely significant for a non-obvious reason. It is not about touch. It is about the moment when the mainstream finally gave up the hopeless attempt to understand how te…
- What is a sticky name to use for emerging market entrepreneurs?
You can't just pick a name and expect it to stick. A sticky name is one that has a great story attached. In this case, you have a terrible story. "Emerging market" is a negative definition, with res…
- Why are there more comment trolls on TechCrunch/AOL than other related sites?
Because the writers engage each other and writers at competing sites more than the smartest readers. Fishbowls tend to attract both groupies and trolls. The former are prone to celebrity worship and t…
- How can the rights of women be better addressed and defended in Afghanistan?
Re-build and re-open the Silk Road as an 8-lane highway network and a high-speed rail network, connecting Afghanistan to Central Asia, China, the Middle East/Turkey (once the pesky problem with Iran i…
- Why does Venkatesh Rao think the world is going to end?
Wonder what's up with this spate of questions directed personally to me? I suspect a complicated troll. Oh well. I no longer believe the world will end. At least not in a short enough time frame for …
- How can I change someone against his will?
There is no one-size-fits all method for all such situations. The art of manipulation is an art, not an algorithm that works with no data. You have provided precisely zero data. Typically, you need to…
- What is the nicest thing a stranger ever did for you?
In college, back in 96, there was a total solar eclipse in India. On an impulse I took a train to the nearest place where I could watch it. This happened to be a remote desert village in Rajasthan. …
- What are the disadvantages of practicing mindfulness? I use mindfulness to mean, "bringing one’s complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis."
You seem to be talking specifically about the practice of vipassana, not the more general philosophy that many people talk about under the idea of "mindfulness" (which includes everything from Boyd's …
- Where should a college student who has never been out of the coasts travel in the United States for the best perspective?
I'll share my 6000-mile/3 week cross country road trip itinerary from May 2011. I'd recommend it to anybody, even though my reasons for doing the trip and choice of locations probably do not apply to …
- Is there greater value in practical knowledge than in philosophy?
A merchant once challenged the philosopher Thales with this question. Thales said philosophers could be just as good at practical affairs, and proved himself by speculating on olive oil futures and ma…
- Should there be an explicit legal limit to the amount of leverage any entity can engage in, and if so, what should that limit be?
This question only makes sense with respect to corporations, within the scope of limited liability laws and state of play in the game of governance of social cost accounting/externalities. Leveraged …
- Why do some island animals evolve to abnormal sizes?
My guess is that many mainland species are in a dynamic equilibrium with other species along some dimension X, such that too little or too much X is a disadvantage, and the species stabilizes at some …
- How did ancient tribal chiefs lead large armies of tens of thousands of people without running into cohesion problems from exceeding the Dunbar number?
Tribal models of warfare are structured differently and rely on much more lightweight and distributed coordination models that require very little non-local communication. They also tend to be relativ…
- What are some good sources of information for Westerners wishing to understand how democracy in India works?
I would start with the op-ed columnists at the Hindustan Times. Not the Times of India which has gradually degenerated into a tabloid. Of the weeklies, India Today is probably still the best. It was …
- If you were Bill Gates what would you be doing with your life?
Gates is doing his philanthropy in almost exactly the way Rockefeller did. Large top-down programs designed to attack problems that require high startup capital; things that social entrepreneurship (K…
- If self-aware, intelligent, sentient AI turned out to be sociopathic, might it eventually determine humans are a danger to the existence of the planet and of the AI itself?
This does not require self-awareness, intelligence or sentience. All it needs is self-regulation loops with sufficient power. That's the foundation of the Gaia hypothesis and M. Night Shyamalan's The …
- Is it better for a couple/family to be apart a big chunk of the time?
I think you're going to get a lot of answers based on traditional pre-conceptions of what an 'ideal' family or relationship or parenting model 'ought' to be. These aren't bad, but they are design patt…
- Is there anything to replace email?
I've kinda changed my mind about this a few times, but my stable position for a few years is that email is not broken at all. If it looks like it wasn't designed for what it actually does, it is becau…
- Why isn't there a show like The Daily Show that is conservative oriented?
Conservative humor does exist. It needs to be tinged with a bit of sociopath cruelty to work, and as political correctness rises in a culture, it tends to retreat into the privacy of in-groups. To enj…
- Afghanistan: Should the US staff sergeant who murdered 16 Afghan civilians in their sleep on March 11, 2012 be handed over to the Afghan authorities for trial, punishment and execution?
Mark Harrison assumes that jurisdiction is crystal clear (US military law vs. Afghan criminal law), but I am not entirely sure it is. If it turns out it is, then scratch this answer. But if there is…
- What are the most important years of your life? And why? In other words, during what age are the most important life decisions made for the future?
Jeez, why do people have to question the metaphysics of straightforward and legitimate good questions with real, non-trivial answers? This is a question where superior Zen-line pronouncements on lif…
- Do many Quora users misunderstand the proper role of the downvote function?
There is no "proper role." This not a jury system following some sort of due process under the direction of a judge. It isn't even Iron Chef with points for taste, originality and presentation. This i…
- What characterizes cliquey people?
A classic sign (sufficient, not necessary) is that they are extroverted but surprisingly bad at connecting with strangers when alone. In fact introverts do better than them. But with 2-3 clique member…
- Do some people who don't believe in God feel superior? If so, why?
There is some truth to this, but I think most answers are mistaken in thinking it has to do with perceived superiority of the beliefs themselves. Laughlin MacDonald's explanation seems to me the best …
- What's the difference between UI/UX Designer and UI/UX Engineer?
This whole space of professions around UI/UX is ridiculously muddy, and the people within it are the ones to blame. Ironic, since clarity of interfaces between an entity (a segment of the labor market…
- Is Quora in trouble? If so, how should they respond?
Nightclubs come and go as fashions change. Any site that relies primarily on social value is a nightclub. People go there for people and when the people go elsewhere, the nightclub dies. Function is …
- Where can I learn about the origins of Western Individualism? What were the major threads/forces?
Fukuyama has an excellent treatment of the question in The Origins of Political Order. Short version, sometime in the 12th-13th century, the catholic church succeeded in weakening family/kinship struc…
- Do Americans generally expect other people to lie or to tell the truth?
I forget where I read this, but in the nineteenth century, Europeans who did business with Americans came to the conclusion that Americans like to play a very rough game of conversational poker undern…
- Why is the Islamic world currently so backward in science compared to the Western world? Despite the fact that the Islamic world had a head-start in the Middle Ages and was fairly advanced mathematically?
A scientific culture is more than a laundry list of isolated accomplishments, claimed and real. Three critical necessary (but not sufficient) elements are: A tradition of empiricismA tradition of con…
- What will be the consequences of losing our ability to hand-write?
Weakened handwriting strengthens the link between oral and textual cultures I suspect. IMing is practically oral. Email is almost as oral. Handwriting was most used for letter/memo writing, which stro…
- Which locations have tried successfully or otherwise to replicate Silicon Valley and how have they fared in terms of disrupting it?
Yishan Wong's answer really got me thinking about this question a lot more seriously, so I am posting a slightly broader take building on his answer, and my comment on it (http://www.quora.com/Silicon…
- What is the best way to succeed in life if you enjoy coming up with high-tech ideas more than implementing them?
Contrary to poular belief, there IS a way to be credibly involved in the idea economy if you don't like implementation (I include academic basic research and marketing for specific products as a hustl…
- What are the similarities and differences between the current state of technology (2012) and the Dot-Com bubble (1995-2000)?
I caught a teeny piece of the action last time around, and a slightly larger piece this time. Nothing financially significant either time, but enough to get me a good spectator view of the bigger game…
- Who is more intelligent, a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon?
Meaningless comparison. If it weren't for the superficial similarity that both professions are used for rhetorical exaggeration purposes, this would be like asking, "are pianists better musicians than…
- Now that Facebook has acquired Instagram, should Twitter acquire an Instagram competitor?
In a way, they already did: Posterous. Fortunately Posterous is more blogging/photoblogging than photosharing. Sadly that looks like a pure talent acquisition and there are hints that the product will…
- What's a good online resource with a description of all the weight machines at the gym?
I have exactly this problem. As a result, I do far less strength training than i should, on far fewer machines. But the problem goes beyond the lack of good instructional videos. Gyms are in general s…
- What does it feel like to regularly write in a journal or diary?
I wrote a private diary for a couple of years as a teenager. The mind-numbing tedium of the entries made me stop. I wish I'd continued. They'd be fun to read now, years later. J. C. Hewitt is right. T…
- How do you approach a company you want to create a partnership with, if you have no contact person at the company?Do you just contact them through the contact form? Do you try to sell the benefits of the partnership in the initial email?
You do NOT want to sell in the first email. Your first few contact attempts are likely going to be about finding the right person to even talk to. This is a bit of a naive question. There are always a…
- Are there any drawbacks and challenges to Valve's anti-management style mentioned in Michael Abrash's blog post?
The book itself has a section at the end outlining the weaknesses. The section is more than lip-service, and I was impressed by the honesty. But I thought they missed the main one. The biggest weakn…
- What lasting motivation is there for people to contribute free content to websites and index engines if they are not paid for contributing, or able to make a living from it?
This is like asking why you should drive on the streets when the city doesn't pay you to (in fact it charges you to, via taxation) and government civil engineering and maintenance contractors make mon…
- What is the ROI on the average 4-year degree from a US college?
Am adding this link for additional context. http://www.theatlantic.com/busin... Dan Zhang's numbers are for a 30-year ROI. They look believable for the last 30 years, though the spread across majors …
- How do you start a tech startup as a non-technical person?
If you really have serious "capital" (like north of 200k from a trust-fund) become an investor, not a founder. Find a couple of other older people with some experience and their own warchests, form an…
- I'm planning on a 4-day trip to Vegas. What places should I visit?
If you want an unusual itinerary of "anything BUT the Strip" try this out. A look at a) the ongoing attempt at transforming Vegas into a cultural and tech hub b) history and c) random other stuff. Th…
- What jobs will less intelligent, lower skilled people do in the future? What will people on the left side of the bell curve do for work in the future? Will these jobs give dignity? What can be done to ensure this?
You're not paranoid enough. Most of humanity is becoming obsolete and ripe for slaughter. They will start dying faster as healthcare systems start collapsing around the world, lifespans get shorter, …
- How can you increase your productivity on side projects at the end of the day when you're tired from work/college?
Over a period of 4 years at a full-time job, I wrote a book and grew a blog from nothing to 4500 subscribers, typically writing a 2000-4000 word post every week. All my work was over a couple of eveni…
- What are your experiences as a self-published author?
Published http://tempobook.com last year. Paperback via LightningSource, using the short discounting model outlined in Aaron Shepherd's excellent "Aiming at Amazon" (basically a way to sacrifice phys…
- What would you advise your (hypothetical) 22-year old computer science graduate to do with their life?
You seem optimistic about the future, so you are looking to maximize "success" and an "enriching career/life." I believe this is a bad basis for planning a life as a 22-year old college graduate in 20…
- Should Quora implement action links on their Facebook Timeline app?
Hell no, but they may not have a choice. Why no? Joel Spolsky's post on Building Communities with Software has some really good (and controversial) thoughts on the subject. http://www.joelonsoftwar…
- What are some great examples of successfully putting lipstick on a pig?
To get the ball rolling. Nathan Myrhvold's Intellectual Ventures was initially pitched as this amazing high-powered brain trust of brilliant people generating great ideas. Savvy/cynical people seem t…
- Fundraising (non-profit): What would your first steps be as a new Director of Development for an NGO?
I have no direct experience of this particular role (except as an observer), but my general approach to any such external-facing role is to start outside in. If this is the sort of NGO that gets money…
- Why are data transfer speeds usually measured in megabits per second?
Bytes are two levels of abstraction above the physical medium. The level of abstraction you need depends on the typical problems you solve. Communications engineering involves problems bandwidth users…
- Optimism: What is there to be optimistic about right now?
By their very nature, positive things are more obscure/hidden than negative things. So there is a natural human bias towards pessimism/doom-and-gloom. The last 2 decades are interesting precisely bec…
- Why is J.R.R. Tolkien more famous than Isaac Asimov?
Joshua is right, it's because of the movies. If the Foundation series is ever adapted well for the screen, it will probably blow both Star Wars and LOTR out of the water. The literary quality is poor …
- What are some glaring inefficiencies embedded in modern infrastructure?
I think things that cost little or nothing when underutilized are nothing compared to actively wasteful infrastructure. These are all "wasteful now that we have the Internet/cheap computing" examples:…
- Does Mitt Romney's skills from Bain Capital make him the perfect person to fix a broken economy?
It actually makes him a far worse candidate I think. This is not a general comment on corporate executives. I am sure many senior roles in large companies might be good training. But not Bain. Why no…
- Why is enterprise software often so complicated?
Business processes are generally byzantine monstrosities that have evolved to codify fundamentally pathological human power relationships. Enterprise software merely digitizes these for the most part,…
- Why is there such a wealth of artistic talent in the United States of America?
Artistic self-expression belongs in the self-actualization level of the Maslow pyramid. Lots of other, more basic needs have to be widely met in order for a significant portion of the population to tu…
- Should I accept a job offer from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, or Square, considering pay, work culture, stock options, how challenging the work is, etc.?
If you want to stay a while and grow, pick the one where you'd be reporting to the best immediate manager. Research shows this is the best predictor of your experience at a job, and unhappy employees …
- How can I better project my voice?
You may be speaking from your throat rather than the front of your mouth. It is very hard to get volume and projection from your throat. In fact you'll give yourself a sore throat very quickly if you …
- General Knowledge: What is meant to be a civilized person?
My favorite characterization of the civilized state is due to William James: "The progress from brute to man is characterized by nothing so much as the decrease in the frequency of proper occasions f…
- How seriously should someone with the job title "social media guru" be regarded?
Briefly, you should not take them seriously at all. Except perhaps as a market of suckers to whom you can sell junky products of your own ("Advanced Twitter Strategy Course, open only to people who ar…
- What is Pakistan's problem with drone strikes?
Drones are a weapon with unprecedented leverage. They achieve, with minimal collateral damage, political and military goals that used to take firebombing of entire cities 60 years ago, such as the fir…
- Was Malcolm Gladwell right to say that Steve Jobs will be forgotten in 50 years?
A deeply silly argument that says absolutely nothing about the relative historical importance or lack thereof of the two individuals and the companies they built. And this is without even considering …
- What are the coming revolutions in text analytics?
I see the biggest opportunity/challenge around inferring conceptual metaphors and narrative patterns in a text. There was an earlier DARPA BAA around that sort of thing. Narrative/metaphor is somewher…
- Why do employees leave startups for big brands?
I've worked at one each of both and consulted for a couple of both kinds. All pretty decent, thankfully. But I've seen instances of more toxic examples of both from ringside seats. I'll talk about t…
- What are some recent industry trends in Trade-Funds, specifically, co-marketing?
I should qualify my answer by saying that I've never heard the term "Trade Funds" and know nothing about the operating details of this sort of marketing arrangement with channel partners. I am basing …
- Is Apple facing extinction in the future?
Fascinating and very important current question. I'll provide a broad, general answer and apply it to Apple. "Ever" is a really really long time. The longest-lived business documented was Kongo Gumi,…
- What does a good feature request look like (from a non-technical employee)?
Short answer: users (as opposed to product managers) should not attempt to provide "good" feature requests at all. They should submit feature requests in whatever form feels right to them. Including h…
- Why does the idea that atheism is a religion keep getting repeated?
In the best-case, best-faith version of the argument, there is actually significant merit to it. You picked your points of comparison that show the two are dissimilar. It is possible to pick a differe…
- What are the most common Silicon Valley/Bay Area beliefs and attitudes that are not shared by people outside of this area? What are things that feel and sound normal here but wouldn't elsewhere?
I am trying to find the mother of all SV bubble beliefs and I think it is this one (never explicitly stated -- it is more of a missing belief/blindspot than an active one) "There is no point in plann…
- Can reading some books make a person pessimistic and suicidal?
Pessimistic yes. People often tell me a lot of my own writing depresses them. Suicidal, I doubt it. Outiside of very specific scenarios that target your life with surgical precision (like reading in…
- What does it feel like for a long-time vegetarian to discover they've accidentally consumed meat?
Has happened to me thrice in my 35 odd years (I am absent-minded). Never in an obvious form though. In each case the meat and veggie dishes looked similar. In each case, it was a few bites (1-3... am…
- Is the Quora Credits system an effective or well-designed system / gamification mechanism?
I must be in the minority here. I think credits work very well. Possibly I don't experience the downside since at any given time, I generally have far more credits than I can use. Though I don't publi…
- Do startups view prior military service as a positive or negative when hiring?
In Israel, it is practically a requirement. In the US it's a mixed bag. Stereotyping hugely, I'd represent typical attitudes like so. In the US, the denizens of the California startup scene (compared…
- How do you deal with marketing epiphanies that require you to act fast?
While I applaud your inspiration, thinking of marketing this way is very dangerous. Marketing is not one clever time-sensitive promotional idea after another. This is a terrible way to think about mar…
- What do people in India do very easily which can't be done by people of other nations?
I saw this question a while back, and started writing an answer that I deleted because I was not satisfied that I could do the question justice even with a lot of words, due to subtle contextual thing…
- What laws and policies are impeding economic growth of the U.S. economy?
Hands down, lack of a functional healthcare system. Fix that one problem and nearly every other problem will take care of itself. Including whipping China in the 21st century race for global dominan…
- If you're successful at hackathons, and you're not the programmer, can you get a job as a product manager?
A "career in PM" sounds like you want the big company jobs. If you succeeded in selling your ideas to hackers at hackathons, that's not entirely relevant because most big company work is incremental v…
- Do people make better decisions as stakeholders or as third party reviewers?
You are conflating three things: skill, formal authority and personal incentives. A doctor would operate on herself if possible, if the alternative were a layperson or a much more incompetent doctor f…
- Why do people overpack?
I sympathize. I am a minimalist myself. Some travel of course simply calls for more packing. It's not length of time but how much you are doing. If you are female and are going to a formal business …
- Which field(s) of math would be more beneficial in real life and business ?
Real life (which I interpret as everyday personal life), business life and entrepreneurial life are very different things. For real life, I'd recommend the basic mathematics of finance required for m…
- Instead of "Made in Country X" shouldn't we start listing where parts are made instead?
Basically, yes. Your instincts are correct that our current accounting systems for understanding global trade are way off. Old models no longer make sense. But the situation is more complex than just …
- Which empires have had family feuds for succession?
The Nanda dynasty which ruled the Magadhan empire just before Alexander's invasion reputedly had one ruler, Dhana Nanda, kill 9 brothers on his way to the throne, a level of bloodshed that was not see…
- Why do Republicans and conservatives lie so much about national debt and spending?
I don't know why people are rushing to explain that Democrats lie too, about other things, or that politicians in general lie. The question can be taken at face value: given that we all agree that all…
- How is coffee served in different parts of the world and why?
In America, there is an evolved, complex coffee culture. Coffee is made in vast quantities of either weak and pathetic or strong+burnt+acrid drip brew and served like water in diners and gas stations…
- What strategies do you use when writing and formatting your answers on Quora?
None. I just wing it, stream-of-consciousness style. If I am browsing Quora (generally during an energy low) and some question happens to match my mood (happy, sad, vicious, satirical, whatever), I ju…
- Do countries with Soviet-style sports training systems like China spoil the intended spirit of the Olympic games?
Your premise is completely flawed. How "organic" do you think sports in the US is? It's pretty much all top-down: leagues, sponsors, university athletic programs, YMCA, NCAA...how autonomously do you …
- What are great ways to promote an iOS app?
From what I've heard, one unique/distinguishing feature of app marketing is the effectiveness of doing many apps. Angry Birds was Rovio's 57th game I believe. Many successful app developers seem to f…
- College Sports: What is the best running technique?
I agree with Thomas Valadez: foot-fall technique is key. I don't think you can really train yourself to use a certain technique though, if you are a casual runner. It takes some natural athletic tal…
- What are the best vegan recipes?
Amazing Tofu Pot Pie (credit: Vanessa and Bruce from whom I got it 14 years ago; still a regular for me). Crust: 2 cups flour 1/2 cup margarine 1 tsp. salt 1/2 cu…
- What would have happened if the British never came to India? How developed would India have been? How would the system be in modern India?
Okay, let's actually run through this counterfactual in a realistically detailed way. Two big modeling assumptions (that I was going to justify in 2000 words, but then deleted....) Socially and cult…
- If the US economy is 70% dependent on consumer spending, how can it ever produce more than it spends?
I strongly disagree with Matt Ford's economics-based answer, because this is fundamentally not an economics-based question. I also disagree with User's answer, because austerity is not the answer eith…
- Why does Quora continue to underachieve?
The Techcrunch article itself can be ignored. The opinion is silly. But as a piece of evidence for the thesis: "the PR momentum has plateaued" it is serious, and part of a different problem. PR is a …
- How do I get started listening to Indian classical music?
You can start the same as with any kind of music: sample a few tracks, pick a couple you like, buy those albums, follow the trail of that particular performer, instrument or vocal style, find friends …
- What is wrong with Walras' socialism?
I've heard the name Walras before I think, but I am not familiar with the models beyond the question details. These are pretty radical ideas hidden under innocuous sounding axioms. You'd have to run…
- I need illustrations of fixed pitch propellers blades
There is no good way to do an apples-to-apples comparison, since the flight regimes are so different (most airplanes have a lower speed limit that is higher than the maximum speed of most birds). You …
- How does someone show dominance in a subtle way?
It's honestly not very hard. Dominance is another term for playing high status in all situations. Read Impro by Keith Johnstone for the basics. Some of them are: High status people make slow, measure…
- Is the deeply held notion of individual privacy a recently developed value?
Individualism and individual privacy are not the same thing. I suspect confusing the two is what is motivating the question. Individual privacy has always been part of the species, and is not a parti…
- Which industries and jobs will self-driving cars and trucks disrupt in a positive fashion, a negative fashion or just entirely destroy?
Joshua Engel is right. This goes well beyond disruption. People generally use the term disruption incorrectly. It is most useful for analysis when used in the strict Clayton Christensen sense rather …
- If a 747 can carry a space shuttle, why are airlines so strict with baggage allowances?
The sincere answers are correct (I haven't checked the numbers, but they look right based on almost forgotten aerospace engineering classes), but I don't think they will satisfy the OP because I dont …
- Mythology: Who was the most badass mythical character of all?
Heh, on questions like this, population will tell. With 1 billion plus each, you can be sure that badass candidates from Indian and Chinese mythologies are going to be proposed and dominate. Greek and…
- What are some good hotel names?
You seem to be coming up with names that mean a lot to you and your co-founders rather than to your customer. That's the wrong approach. Of course you shouldn't pick a name that you absolutely hate, b…
- How can one learn to speak in metaphors or pictures?
I am not sure this is really teachable. At least the metaphor part. It is a personality trait. Visual thinking is an independent trait, and a more teachable one, but only the kinds that are based on e…
- Do Americans respect Psy?
Short answer: a strong no. You only have to compare Korean reactions to American teen reactions to immediately get that there is a difference and that "respect" isn't an adjective that naturally spr…
- Given the massive demand for software engineers right now (2012) which is not adequately being met by supply, why haven't salaries increased drastically?
I'll add an executive-level twist based on labor cost strategy to the general ideas about demand and supply at the engineering level. For emerging markets, this may be more unpredictable and a bigger …
- Why does Venkatesh Rao think saving the world is not a worthy mission?
The very idea is ill-posed and "not even wrong." It is a sort of uncritical and naive secularization of the theological idea of "salvation" which is actually a much more well-posed concept. That's abo…
- If there were an "eastern canon" which books would it contain and why?
I don't believe Eastern traditions (except perhaps Islamic) lend themselves to the idea of canons. The idea is a peculiar product of a historicist imagination coupled with religious homogeneity and te…
- 50 people to run the world: Who are they and why?
Note: I am ignoring the "rules" because they make this an impossible problem. I would choose 40 people via random sampling among people above the age of 4, with perhaps some extra weight for the 14+ …
- What are some ways of increasing one's personal return on common-good efforts?
Do things that: Generate both personal and commons returns, and share generously, erring on the side of giving away more than you keep. Make sure that the resultant status difference that results for…
- Why do Indians from India speak English between each other rather than a common national language that they could all learn and use irrespective of the mother tongue in their province / region?
The biggest single factor is probably Macaulay's infamous "Minute on Education" from 1835 which basically created the modern landscape of Indian higher education (and therefore the status of English a…
- U.S. Air Force: What is the difference between an F-16 and F-15?
The "inside" story is in Coram's Boyd: The fighter pilot who changed the art of war. Basically, Boyd developed an approach to fighter design known as E-M (energy maneuverability) based on his experie…
- Is it a bad idea to write a college application essay about how much one hates America?
Don't listen to the positive thinking bores here. Actually, wait, make THEM the target. Blame them for all that's wrong with America. It is actually a seriously strong case. Read Barbara Ehrenreich's …
- How do bonafide change agents differ from wannabe change agents?
Change agents are themselves changed by the process of striving for the change they seek to bring about. They enter and exit as very different people. Practically strangers divided by a rebirth in the…
- Public Policy: Should indian railway come under the privatisation?
Haven't been on an Indian train for a long time, but what I remember growing up was steadily worsening service and performance, which I think has continued. Mainly a result of population increase and …
- In a war between the cognitive and socioeconomic elites, who would win?
First a suggestion: you MUST have "labor bosses/union leadership" in the definition of socioeconomic elites.even if they aren't in the top 1% financially. For all practical purposes, they are part of …
- Why are first generation Indian Americans raised in the USA taller than their parents?
Don't know if this is actually true, but it fits my anecdotal observations, and I wouldn't be surprised if it is empirically true. It also correlates to the much higher incidence of diabetes and heart…
- Why can't we assume that some races of Homo sapiens are, on average, smarter than others?
You absolutely can. You'd even have bits of scientific evidence in specific comparisons like Ashkenazi Jews versus The Rest (even if controversial) that is worth thinking about. Ashkenazi Jewish int…
- What was it like to browse the Web in the nineties?
What's with all this nostalgic romanticization? Especially given that those who are capable of writing answers here aren't even like 50 yet for the most part, and are writing answers that make them so…
- Should I transfer?
Empirically, culture shock takes about 6 months to overcome, leaving home takes 6 months too. So give it a full year. Maybe 14 months, due to compounding. Took me about that long. Moves like transfers…
- When is the zombie apocalypse going to happen?
Those who claim it has already arrived almost have it right, but not quite. A zombie is someone who appears to have no inner mental life to you, but appears merely as a predictable pattern of destruc…
- Can you perform inception on yourself?
Yes, I think it can be done, and without drugs or hypnosis etc. And I think there is not much difference between doing it to yourself as opposed to doing it to others. But not quite the movie version…
- If every state of the USA declared war against each other, which would win?
LOL! Lovely question. I've actually thought a lot about this as part of some idle speculation for a sci-fi near future dystopian story. I think there is no way to imagine a true 50x50 conflict. You'…
- How can I avoid nitpicking others' incorrect use of words? I like to be precise about the way I use language, which often causes arguments with people about the meaning of the words they use. How can I avoid this?
Refocus your attention on accuracy. You'll scratch your itch and add value at the same time. To do this, remind yourself of what SITUATION you are in for all communication. Silently say to yourself be…
- What are some things you can realistically teach yourself in a weekend?
Learning to ride a bicycle as an adult, if done exactly right. Took me several weeks of daily practice to figure it out as a kid, because I was doing it wrong (using my older sister's bike that was to…
- If I want to become an entrepreneur, where do I start?
Sit down, make yourself comfy. Grab a beer. This might take a while. There are two basic choices. You can either become a Silicon Valley Style Capital-E Entrepreneur™ (SVSE), or a small-e entreprene…
- Who is more ignorant, the man who can't define lightning or the one who does not admire its awesome power?
While I mostly agree with Joshua's view on this matter, I think the position is not entirely vacuous. While most people who use this particular false dichotomy are, as Joshua says, mostly lying to the…
- What is the good way of learning?
Think of it as acquiring an addiction rather than "learning" something. Look for the most addictive component activity the subject involves, that can be repeated with minor variations and increasing c…
- Why do all TED presentations seem like fluff?
YMMV, but I think there is HUGE variance in TED. The speakers who come across as the most slick/polished/used-car-salesmen types tend to stick to your mind as being representative because they are the…
- What are the economics of lying?
There is some really interesting work (which won a Nobel prize) on used car sales, The Market for Lemons This is about lying specifically in the context of economic transactions in the presence of …
- What are the odds that by 2100, India will have split into multiple countries, given that India is a very diverse country, both geographically & culturally?
I'd put it at 20-25% at least. Possibly more, depending on how politics evolves. The three biggest tectonic forces are: Population stability in parts of the south and west and continuing growth, wit…
- What might young Einstein ponder today?
This is an interesting question. Erik Goldman and Anirudh Joshi basically using the question to make a rather cynical comment about the state of physics today (physicists turning to superficial Inter…
- What is the difference between Bollywood and Hollywood movies?
I'll stick to mainstream movies. TV and arthouse are harder to compare. Bollywood is mostly stories based on unreconstructed medieval sensibilities set in modern contexts. There is very little irony,…
- Is there such a thing as being too smart for your own good?
I just read a story that perfectly illustrates this pathology, the story of physicist Paul Frampton. The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble He is a world-renowned physicist…
- What's the most important problem that Project Glass can solve?
I don't know about "important" but I do think there are interesting problems it can solve. I would definitely like one. A little quick analysis before I offer my answer. As an ambient-presence, alwa…
- What is it like to complete your final PhD defense? What happened and how did it feel?
At U. Michigan, for engineering, the stressful event is the "pre-defense" to the committee (no outsiders) about 6 months before the defense. All serious criticism comes out then and you have to go rew…
- Festivals: What is Holi?
I'll add a personal take: a thoroughly awful "festival" during which drunk and stoned extroverts try to drag introverts into unwanted physical revelry. The festivities are occassions for bullying hors…
- Why are the subcontinental people so uncomfortable with their core identity, yet pretend to be proud of themselves?
First, some support for the question since some people are questioning the premises, then an answer. Support for the premises of the question This is empirically documented in Pankaj Ghemawat's "Wo…
- How do you compete with Starbucks in the coffee industry?
I'll provide one perspective as an omnivorous coffee drinker. I drink everything from 7-11 machine coffee to the most pretentious pour-over outside the home. And everything from instant to my own pour…
- According to you, what was the underlying message from Foundation by Isaac Asimov?
I don't think there is one. Asimov doesn't come across as a very ideological writer. His nonfiction reveals a rather conventional, almost banal mid-century kind of unexamined American moral scientism.…
- Roughly how many books does a person need to read to be an expert on a particular subject?
Since you specified social science, here's your formula. Read three books (you will need help from a subject expert to pick them)Browse about a 100 papers in enough detail to know that you understan…
- What does a good answer on Quora look like? What does it mean to "be helpful"?
A good Quora answer is not the same as a good answer. If the question exhibits bad faith, a good answer is no answer. DNFTT. If the question seems to exhibit good faith, a good answer reframes the q…
- What will Nawaz Sharif's victory in elections in Pakistan mean for Pakistan?
I see no reason to think anything will be different from the last time around. It isn't military leaders versus civilian leaders. It's the lack of credible civilian institutions that drives Pakistani …
- What country do you least want to visit? Why?
A good way to ask the question seriously is to ask: where would you pay to go, where would you go only if it it were free, and where you would go only if you were paid to. I'd pay to go to: any pleas…
- What are some markets with 25 million+ customers that are ripe for disruption?
Career services for Generation X, especially women. The cohort is about 50 million individuals, mostly mid-career now, and extremely vulnerable to becoming victims of the Internet economy. The younges…
- What plot devices should be forbidden in all future Star Trek incarnations?
Short answer: none. They all have life in them. It's the larger narratives that are the problem. Fix the big arcs, and the plot devices will feel fresh again. I'd never watched more than a glimpse o…
- What features would make Quora better?
A racial and gender profiling tool. For example a block/allow mechanism that allows people to self-segregate out by checking off labels from a list, to control what they see and who sees what they sha…
- What are the most beautiful languages?
Let's elevate this question from a party game of posturing and flattery/pandering, shall we? I'll stick to spoken form and ignore the visual written form. The two are mostly unrelated questions. I'll…
- Why doesn't the U.S. adopt the Israeli model for airport security screening? The Israeli airport screening system has been largely successful in preventing terrorist incidents despite the ostensibly greater threat.
It's nice of Yair Levine to provide an answer that rationalizes the US model in as flattering a way as possible. But he's being too nice. The real answer is, "we don't deserve it." The harsh truth is…
- What is an operating system? What are the various functions of operating systems in layman's terms?
I like a political-economic metaphor: functions in the operating system are the equivalent of public utilities like water and power. If an economic sector has characteristics of a natural monopoly, is…
- How will you change the game if you are in charge of Microsoft Bing?
Solve enterprise search. Reposition consumer offering around strengths in increasing open data world derived from enterprise. Rethink search UX to vertically integrate bookmarking, analytics and note-…
- What was the most profitable lie ever told in history?
Probably the famous "two contracts" lie in the conspiracy that led to the Battle of Plassey and from there to British control of India. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat... Mir Jafar…
- What's the difference between baseball and cricket?
I wrote a post about this a few years ago. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/0... Here's an excerpt. Here’s all you really need to know about the cricket-baseball difference, as far as understanding …
- How paranoid is too paranoid?
With 99% probability you're buying your own bullshit and you don't really have anything worth protecting. Inventors routinely overestimate their own cleverness and the significance of what they do. …
- How effective are donations for monetizing a blog?
I am in my third year doing it. First year, I got $2200, second year I got about $4000. This year, I am on track to make significantly less... maybe $2600. Will explain reasons later. Some calibratio…
- Has anyone found any loopholes that would make the technology impossible in the Hyperloop project as detailed by Elon Musk?
Hyperloop is a hopelessly incomplete idea! Full of fatal gaps. Clearly, it needs an iPhone app and Facebook/Twitter integration. Glaring gap there. Integrated check-in (both Foursquare and airplane st…
- How do unemployed people introduce themselves?
Options. Select right one according to context of question "So, what do you do?" Brazen it out: "I am an unemployed bum, got any change? haha!"Convert to a networking opportunity: "I am on the market…
- What are the job prospects of Aerospace in USA compared to software? Which specializations between aerodynamics, propulsion and structures are in demand?
You are making a big category error here. All of modern aerospace engineering is effectively a specialized kind of software engineering. Most of your work will involve programming if you get into the …
- Is it possible to compete with free? If so, how?
Of course it is. Examples are all over the place. Microsoft vs. Linux. AirBnB vs. Couchsurfing (sort of), industry intelligence reports vs. Wikipedia, Posthaven vs. free blog platforms, books vs. blo…
- Can being an extrovert create social anxiety?
Oh hell yeah. There are two major situations where introverts are actually more socially comfortable and extroverts experience anxiety. Often crippling. 1. When there is an insufficient number of pe…
- What is the reason I am unable to finish what I start?
I wrote about this recently. Short answer: finish more to finish more. It's a habit based on using reinforcement/conditioning to train your brain to the payoff schedule of a project lifecycle, which …
- What are the best research groups investigating complex systems and complex networks?
Besides Santa Fe, there are excellent complexity programs at U. Michigan and Cornell, and something called the New England Complexity Research Institute. http://necsi.edu But really, it is less of a…
- Is it right to assume that minority cultures want to be protected?
Modernity usually splits any marginal culture into cultural conservatives who want to remain insular and modernists who want to assimilate into the modern mainstream. This recent example of the Bonda …