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your argument begs the question of whether or not we can successfully test for this trait to begin with.

i don't think we can. the outsized productivity impact a good person can have far outweighs the statistical probability of getting one if you simply accept all competent interviewers, i.e. the expected value is so high that you can blindly hire until you find one, given sufficient financial resources. without the financial resources, you only hire people you already know are good, which is the general pattern i've seen over 20 years working in this industry.


just a note: as with all wolf-looking dogs, the biggest risk is unscrupulous breeders who will sell you something much more ... shall we say "authentic" than just a big friendly dog with some wolf phenotypes. buyer beware.


There's also a risk of people mistaking it for a wolf and shooting it. I have a dog that looks very similar to a Coyote from a distance, and I sometimes fear him being mistaken. Luckily he is very much a territory dog and never leaves the property, but there are "neighborhood" dogs, especially in the rural areas that could easily be mistaken. Generally you'll see this happen with people who have sheep or cattle they are trying to protect the calves of, shoot Coyotes or wolves.


> less likely ... to engage in drug abuse.

i really doubt this.


Less likely to get caught engaging in drug abuse, maybe


Or be convicted, definitely.


There is so much right in the above three posts that I'd vote twice, if I could.

The wealthy buy drugs from people who drive nice sports sedans and wear suits, or similar. They aren't down at the crack house giving blowjobs for dime bags.

Some of the biggest stashes of drugs, that I have seen, have been inside what you'd probably call a mansion. No, this wasn't dealers. This was for personal consumption and/or to be consumed by their guests.

Those guests may well have included people who work in the judicial system, by the way.


Back in college my cocaine dealer was a city police officer. I had no idea until I saw him eating at a local restaurant in his police gear.


I don't want to be too specific, but one of the best 'cooks' that I've known was the ADA and now holds a higher elected position.

Cooks, for those who don't know, turn coke into crack, a smokable form.

She would do it with a stove and a coffee pot, as much as an ounce at a time.


the biggest dealer at my college went to a "very good" law school and is now working in DC.

go figure.


In the affluent suburban town where I grew up, the chief of police was caught selling percocet to a middle schooler.


It depends how you define it.

Alcohol abuse is positively correlated with wealth. Tobacco, marijuana, and cocaine use is negatively correlated.


Source? Marijauana use and alcohol use both seem to correlate positively with wealth, but Tobacco indeed appears to be a negative correlation. [0]

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/


The study you cited is limited to young adults (18-23), which is a rather small segment. A more recent study with a wider population [1]:

> Poorer marijuana users smoking the most. Pot users profile closer to cigarette smokers than alcohol drinkers.

[1] http://www.denverpost.com/2016/08/14/study-poorer-marijuana-...


google absolutely sucks at it, probably because they don't see any value in it given their user base (everyone) and lack of competition.

i.e. my youtube front page just shows the same 100 video links over and over and over.

there isn't even a really good way to discover relevant content in the channels i've already subscribed to. it's pretty lame.


YouTube makes me want to punch my computer.

The related videos are never relevant, letting a child meander through YouTube invariably winds up showing my kids super inappropriate content. The YouTube mobile app sucks horribly (ios) I literally think that YouTube is one of the worst ubiquitous services there is.


This isn't a great solution, because kids are pretty good at getting out and into whatever app they want, but there is a YouTube Kids app. It's more like streaming TV than YouTube.


it's amazing how much the finance industry can get away with. like honest-to-goodness amazing.

it's really impressive how these people can have such a death-grip on society. honestly, i'm more curious than mad. how is such a thing even possible? i mean, wow.


It's not "finance" per se. It's anyone granted a carte blanche privilege of some rent to exploit. This is almost always granted either directly or indirectly by the government.

How has finance made it possible? By getting the government to subsidize the industry for all existing entrants at the expense of people who may have better, more progressive ideas about how to manage the financial system. Also at the expense of people in general.


The big moneybags are always above the law.

This seems to become one of the biggest problems of modern civilization. Until it's fixed, all sorts of issues like this, and bigger, will continue to occur.


Avoiding repercussions for bad security is pretty much consistent across all industries.


Because of our corrupt banking system and the politicians in bed with them.


Having been in that system, the reality is so much more bizarre than that.

The actual reality I observed is that the government inspectors and regulators are lawyers and older industry people who simply don't understand technology. Since the US government has limited technical expertise they rely on FIs to adhere to standards and propose self-regulatory measures.


The finance industry as a whole spends a few billion dollars on lobbying. They spend the most on lobbying compared to every other sector. imo this is one of the things the tech industry hasn't fully optimized yet


Neither of your first two sentences seem to be true:

- [Lobbying Spending Database | OpenSecrets](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2017&inde...)

And note that "Education" isn't spending that much less!

> imo this is one of the things the tech industry hasn't fully optimized yet

How would the tech industry "optimize" lobbying? Or even just lobbying by finance?


You're kind of right. I misread the decimal as a comma in $248,785,615.00. Pharma / Health is the next highest spending industry at around $144,778,982, about $100 million less than finance. Finance is the top lobby. Tech lobbying is at $68,403,203 which isn't even half of what finance officially spends on lobbying.

The OpenSecrets lobbying data also doesn't include lobbying money that isn't officially lobbying money. A lot of politicians, at least in the US - including state level legislators, have non-profit foundations with sketchy ledgers. With many of these foundations, little of the money dontated actually goes towards their publicly stated causes. Most of it is spent on miscellaneous expenses such as trips and dinners or on political ads.

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2015/02/09/politics-and-the-u...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/08/03/how-end-polit...

https://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/06/12/12794/state-legis... - oversight doesn't usually happen when it's not public funds being directed into the non-profits

If you include the finance industry's donations to sketcy non-profits that are closely tied to politicians, then I'm guessing it would dwarf what we're seeing compared to just official lobbying money

Tech would 'optimize' not just by spending more, but also in offering benefits that finance can't offer such as better data for say elections as an example


Well, these guys are simply too big to fail. Equifax cannot go bust, otherwise loads of consumer credit (mortgages, car loans etc) would freeze up, causing huge harm to the economy.

The market likely knows this, hence the stable stock price.


Genuine question, how are Equifax's services functionally different from the other credit bureaus? What is to stop the federal gov from shutting them down to protect national security forcing any business partners to move to the other providers.


Equifax cannot go bust, otherwise loads of consumer credit (mortgages, car loans etc) would freeze up

Nope - there are two others who will gladly take up the slack.


My company would be really hampered if Equifax went bust. We do use two other credit bureaus, but some functions depend on data only Equifax provides.

We also use the different bureaus together for cross checking, often one bureaus file will be out of date or have errors, while the other is fine. So we'd have a much harder job of calculating risk if one of the big bureaus went out of business, simply because we'd be losing a major data source that drives our business.

I am very sure this case applies to other financial institutions as well.


if every white american spent a week as another race, i don't think a single one would be 'shocked' or 'flabbergasted' about any of this.


I wish "Black Like Me" were mandatory reading in public schools:

Black Like Me, first published in 1961, is a nonfiction book by white journalist John Howard Griffin recounting his journey in the Deep South of the United States, at a time when African-Americans lived under Racial Segregation. Griffin was a native of Dallas, Texas, who had his skin temporarily darkened to pass as a black man. He traveled for six weeks throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia to explore life from the other side of the color line.

It's short and fascinating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me


or...you could read something written by an actual black person?


You're on this site, so I hope you recognize the stereotyping and assumptions of character in your statement.

I am white, ~25% Filipino also, but light skinned so historically I have been taken as a white male. I'm not shocked or flabbergasted at all by this because I am an American and part of our laws that we hold very dear allows us to publicly espouse views that are repugnant.

I heard the speaker saying terrible things about Jews, which no thinking person would ever support. I did not hear him inciting or suggesting attacks against them though, which would be illegal. At one point someone tried to rush the stage, though we don't know his motivations. That person was beaten, which should have resulted in the arrests of everyone involved.

Other than that, he can say or think whatever he wants to say or think. When he raises his hand or asks another to do so against a fellow human being is where the line is crossed.


> At one point someone tried to rush the stage, though we don't know his motivations. That person was beaten, which should have resulted in the arrests of everyone involved.

The person who rushed the stage was Isadore Greenbaum. All he did was shout "Down with Hitler!" and knock down a microphone[1]. He was the only one arrested and was further charged with disorderly conduct[1]. None of his assailants were charged or arrested.

1. http://www.historynet.com/made-in-america-americans-in-suppo...


Could a reasonable person think that he intended to harm someone on the stage? If so that was the correct legal outcome no matter how unfortunate.


I made no judgement - I merely stated the facts.


read my post again carefully. my point is actually that _no_ non-white american people would be shocked.

i'm not really talking about white people at all, because obviously there are some who would be and wouldn't be shocked at widespread racism by white people.

this is a subtle point that you are missing, which is ironic because you are 25% asian, i imagine you have seen quite a bit of anti-asian racism (it's just a joke bro! don't you love being the butt of jokes? who doesn't love that!) from white people because they have no idea you have asian family.

and i'll just pre-empt your next point: i'm not saying only white poeple can be racist, that's obviously not the case if you've ever been overseas, and anti-white racism also happens a lot in america.

i'll generalize my point for you, so that you may understand:

no person of a minority race would be shocked that the majority race harbors a not-insignificant subpopulation with vehement racist views against other races. if every single majority race were to spend a week as a minority, that would likely dispel any notions they had of the contrary.

^ this works for all races.


Did you just "white privilege" and undercover citizen trying to expose Nazi's ~80 years ago because he was shocked at how widespread support was? Your point is that if he'd been black he wouldn't have been shocked by Nazi support?


Well, I find it unlikely that a Chinese, Mexican or African-American would have been surprised that a high ranking law enforcement officer was openly supportive of the people terrorising their communities in those days.

To be honest I'm a little surprised that a Jewish person would be that naive either, particularly a lawyer that helped found the ADL.


Do you disagree that being white, on average, causes one to be less exposed to racism? I don't think that is a particularly radical concept.

I also think that being a male, on average, causes one to be less directly exposed to cat-calling and other everyday-sexism. Do you take offense at my suggestion of male privilege?


On average? You going to measure that in a lab and show me your margin of error, or is this now a political discussion?

And "male privilege" is dumb. Measure it - show me your science. Otherwise I'll think about how many men die on the job versus women, how women receive more lenient sentences for the same crime, or how women now receive the majority of degrees, and a women who never has kids or marries, will make significantly more money over her life than a similar man, and I think "Weird, it's like biology strangely enough, affects our culture in all sorts of crazy ways that having nothing to do with some nut job conspiracy theory about male patriarchy."


Cool, thats about what I expected but I wanted to make sure before I put much time into an argument. Good to see you aren't a hypocrite and provide sources for your highly specific claims as well.


1)Male Deaths: http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-04/business/fi-31566_1_w...

2)Female sentences: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women-prison-s...

3)Women get more degrees: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-a-first-women-surpass-men-in...

4)Never married women earn more: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/...

Everything above is (somewhat) common knowledge. Notice how I picked mostly progressive liberal publications as initial sources, to avoid right-wing partisanship bias.

I don't want to come across as condescending, but were you honestly questioning the parent poster's assertions?


No actually I expected those were more than likely correct or at least supportable, I was being snide because the parent poster was being an ass about simple analogy.

>On average? You going to measure that in a lab and show me your margin of error, or is this now a political discussion?

Is he fucking serious? We're talking about Nazi's, of course its political. If someone is seriously going to demand laboratory tests on catcalling, that screams totally out of touch mens-rights "activist" to me. Not only that, I was making an analogy and he had to dredge up whataboutisms that have nothing to do with the conversation occurring. Before this becomes an issue of why I'm not talking about men being catcalled, anecdotally speaking I don't know if I've ever known any men (even the most handsome people I know) to get yelled at by passing cars, told to smile more at professional conferences etc. I'm not saying it never happens because I'm sure it does but its an issue that disproportionately affects women just like nazi's are an issue that disproportionately affects minorities.

Claiming that its white-privilegey to say that minorities might be more aware of nazi/neo-nazi roots in America is needlessly defensive (and he had to be the one to say white-privilege, which is like Popeye spinach for angry white men I'm convinced). Yes, minorities are going to be more aware of nazi's in America because they are targeted by them.

I'll try to put a think-tank of the worlds best minds together to study these revolutionary claims I'm making.


Maybe you never talked to any relatives from that period, but I did. And to claim they weren't aware of Nazi dangers in the US because of their race is not only by definition racist, but insults their memories. You can't just piss all over an entire race/gender of people and then whine about being insulted back.


i didn't make any of those points, but you just did, and then ascribed them to me, which is pretty typical of online discussions. it's called a straw-man argument.

the reason it's so widespread is it's so easy to do. all you have to do is come up with a bunch of stuff you dislike, and then accuse me of being/doing that stuff.

and there's nothing i can really do about it, because these ideas exist only in your head, not mine.



yeah, wow.

since i own a small business i just tell people i work in finance now. less questions and comments and more quiet, inaccurate assumptions of wealth and power which i am happy to let be.


I have these questions about my taxes....


me too, my tax guy is great at that. here's his number.


it costs me $120/month to insure a high end 911.


Are you insuring it as a daily driver or a secondary vehicle, out of curiosity?


i drive it less than 5000 miles a year. insurance rates aren't determined by how much you drive a car, that's just meta-information the ins. co's collect. theft, crashes, and zip code (for full coverage) are far more important.


they're also involved in far more accidents.


I feel like I’ve seen more busted up GTs than anything else. I guess it makes sense when you build a 400hp muscle car and sell it for less than $30k.


Lol true

Janky Mustang GTs are everywhere


if you have good enough credit you don't need anything down.


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