(Part 2) Best products from r/TrueReddit

> Has our hysterically competitive, education-obsessed society finally outdone itself in its tireless efforts to produce winners whose abilities are literally off the charts?

Competition and overachievement are addressed in the context of education in the film Race to Nowhere, summarized and reviewed here. If you haven't seen the film already, I recommend just reading the review and its fairly interesting and well-written user comments.

Also, I agree with Independent, who says that these aren't "Super People," but rather resume polishers. This article appears to be inspired by college applicants and/or students, and doesn't address what these "Super People" go on to do and become after post-secondary education. seekret links to a blog post about how "large-scale education was... invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system," which also led to an interesting discussion in the comments.

> Perhaps there’s an evolutionary cause, and these robust intellects reflect the leap in the physical development of humans that we ascribe to better diets, exercise and other forms of health-consciousness. (Stephen Jay Gould called this mechanism “extended scope.”)

"Scope" refers to how widely you can apply evolutionary theory. Gould feels that natural selection can apply to macroevolution, not just microevolution, as is commonly accepted. (Source 1, 2)

According to this article, University of Missouri researchers "have found that the human brain grows most when associated with evolutionary competition." However, the link to the study doesn't work, so take that statement as you will.

> Writing in a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, John Quiggin, a visiting professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University, argues that the Great Academic Leap Forward "is both a consequence of, and a contributor to, the growing inequality and polarization of American society."

Here is Quiggins' full article on the subject, but it requires a Chronicle subscription to view.

The term "Great Academic Leap Forward" is probably a nod to behavioral modernity, "a term used in anthropology, archeology and sociology to refer to a set of traits that distinguish present day humans and their recent ancestors from both living primates and other extinct hominid lineages" (traits such as language and symbolic thought). One theory says that "behavioral modernity occurred as a sudden event... Proponents of this theory refer to this event as the Great Leap Forward or the Upper Paleolithic Revolution.

Alluding to the Upper Paleolithic Revolution fits with James Atlas' proposition that there's a new species of people emerging (although obviously not literally), and that there must be some sort of causal event, which he spends the rest of the article trying to identify.

> ...the well-documented phenomenon of helicopter parents. In her influential book “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety,” Judith Warner quotes a mom who gave up her career to be a full-time parent... Bursting with pent-up energy, the mothers transfer their shelved career ambitions to their children. Since that book was published in 2005, the situation has only intensified.

You can preview Warner's book on Amazon and on Google books. Salon.com reviews the book and then expands on its topics in the unfortunately titled Mommy Madness.

It's surprising how early people start training their children for success. NPR runs many, many stories on preschool but there are two that I really enjoyed. The first is about interviews at one of Manhattan's most elite preschools. It's interesting in itself, and also interesting when you think about why preschool is given so much value. The second is about how preschool skills translate into career skills years later.

And, of course, I'm going to link to Why Chinese Mothers are Superior by Amy Chua, a.k.a. Tiger Mom. This, and the book it was excerpted from, spurred so many response articles that you can just search them out on your own. Here's the TR discussion though.

To be continued below, possibly, and if so then tomorrow.

I'm actually very hopeful that we may move past this mindset soon, for a number of reasons.

Guaranteed Income

Anyone who frequents /r/Futurology has seen many arguments for guaranteed minimum income and/or basic income, but the essence of the argument goes something like this:

1. Low skill jobs are being replaced at a faster rate than technology creates new jobs. (ex. there's a working robot that can churn out gourmet burgers faster than fast food for the same price, with virtually no labour)
   
2. This is unsustainable, since not all people have the capacity for skilled work.
   
3. Owners of capital (the 1%) are seeing more and more concentration of wealth, which is also unsustainable (both politically and economically due to lack of consumer purchasing)
   
4. We are in many ways in a post-scarcity society (see Plenitude link below); in particular, we have the economic capacity to meet the minimum needs for survival of everyone on the planet many times over (ex. up to 40% of produced food is wasted)
   
   Guaranteed minimum income is the simplest solution, and has growing support from economists. Everyone has adequate funds for basic subsistence (or close too it), and can earn supplemental income as desired to afford luxuries. Most people will still choose to work, at least some, to support a higher "quality of life", so we'll still have enough people working to make stuff.
   
   Voluntarily Reducing Consumption to Reduce Required Work
   
   There's a growing movement towards early financial independence since the publication of Your Money or Your Life (Amazon, non ref link), and more recently with people like Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme and Pete from Mr. Money Mustache.
   
   These are all people who are advocating a lifestyle of reduced consumption, leading to the stress-free life of complete financial freedom. What's even more awesome, is it's supported by research on hedonic adaptaion, which has essentially shown that we very quickly become acclimatized to new luxuries introduce into our environment, and very quickly settle back to our original "baseline" happiness (assuming all our basic needs are met). So, in essence, we don't need to give up any happiness to pursue early financial independence, and we'll waste fewer resources to boot.
   
   TL;DR: Video
   
   Increasingly cheap entertainment
   
   For the cost of an Internet connection and a $300 device, I have unlimited access to infinite information. The Internet is producing more content in an hour than can be consumed in a lifetime. We've never had access to anything like this in the history of humanity, and I don't think it takes a great imagination to see how this access will continue to transform the way we consume entertainment goods.
   
   Other reading
   
   Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet Schor (Amazon, non ref link)
   
   >"Plenitude puts sustainability at its core, but it is not a paradigm of sacrifice. Instead, it's an argument that through a major shift to new sources of wealth, green technologies, and different ways of living, individuals and the country as a whole can actually be better off and more economically secure."
   
   This book follows a similar argument to the financial independence movement above, but looks at all of society instead of individuals. I think she presents a compelling argument that we don't need to sacrifice "utility" (happiness) for the sake of environmental sustainability. We can have our cake and eat it, too.
   
   All-in-all, I'm very hopeful. I can't wait to see what the future brings.

> Are there great books originally written in Esperanto that lose something in translation?

Well the Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto has 740 pages, so yeah there's a lot of original Esperanto literature. And that's the "concise" not the "complete" encyclopedia.

> Are there songs in Esperanto that I simply must hear?

Depends on personal taste, but my overall favourite music band is Martin kaj la talpoj.

> Even if I learned Esperanto, what would keep me interested enough to practice it if I never left my country?

The people. That's why I keep active. It has a really fun and welcoming community. I've had such brilliant fun and made such great friends at Esperanto events.

In a way it's like summer camp, the first day it's a bunch of strangers, but by the end of the week you've made best friends and you keep coming back and meeting up year after year. Then you have the weird feeling of adjusting back home and trying to explain it to people who didn't go and don't get it. That's why Esperantists are sometimes a bit over enthusiastic, when you've had a great time, you want to invite everyone to come and join too.

Congrats you are doing race.

You carry many assumptions into this it kind of hard to know where to start. First off that those who do not get in with the current tests are lazy. Bam labeled, stored, done. The issue is much much bigger than that. Not to mention the forever long stereotype of lazy blacks/Hispanics and the slacker white boy who has oh so much "potential". The next assumption that is inherent much through all of reddit is that the top smartest people are the ones entitled to the top public education. The divergence is how do you test smart? You can't standardize critical reasoning which is why the standards boards proposed interviews. Back in the USSR they had interviews with professors before you could get into college but after you passed the standardized test. Anything was fair game and for the most part you were given problems you could never solve. The idea was to have a professor look and see at HOW you struggle, see where your brain moves and how fast it gets there as a predictor of possible success. Which yet again brings us to standardized tests that everyone loves to rally against. For the most part the test only measures how well you prepared for the test and in that it is valuable. It shows a student's commitment or ability for rote memorization. Given that k-12 education is nothing but an ever increasing staircase of rote memorization it would certainly seem that a test like that would be apropos. Yet again the issues with both interviews and standard tests lay in who is interpreting them and what they are looking for. Much like colleges it would seem from this article that those high schools that did interviews looked for intangibles that are quite frankly human resources level of bullshit.

Another interesting implication that could be made is that hard work IS merit. That if you work hard enough you deserve to be in these schools. That really ends up being a value call and to be honest when drawing upon such a large student body as that of NYC I would say it really shouldn't be. Hard work as merit is a last resort. Work you can teach, you can force it on the students if they actually want to be there. Merit as a test is something that sits perfectly well in Eastern cultures since the times of bureaucracy exams. Chinese immigrants grew up in a society that has favored exams as a tool for social mobility for longer than America has existed so when asked to take an exam for social mobility do you not think that it in some way favors them? Shit Chinese public school are even more competitive with even more rigorous exams and let's not even get started on the rigors of the Japanese college entrance exams.

This is what I feel you and the writer and a lot of people are missing in your definition of bias and something the city is trying to bring up. First off that everything is biased but that entrance exams are also very skewed not necessarily towards wealth but to certain cultures. In first generation immigrants like those described in this article I feel that this exam taking culture could still be very well alive depending on country of origin because honestly you can't just say Asian...it doesn't work at all to describe the multitude of different countries. Filipino and Vietnamese people are almost nothing like the Chinese in their culture and ways but yet you can throw them into one group and say they're good at ____.

If you're new to this sort of thing, then it's a good read, I guess.

But this is why I got out of /r/skeptic , as it seemed like every other post was the equivalent of shooting clay pigeons on the ground. Yes, homeopathy is stupid -- as a yoga teacher, I know more than most how fervently the woo community touts its benefits despite the complete lack of scientific validation. But you're either the sort of person who's smart enough never to use it, or you're the sort of person who automatically distrusts any word against it from the "medical establishment". It's all preaching to the choir.

Ah, what the hell. Here's some reviews from the Amazon page:

> Problems purchasing (One star) Unable to actually buy this, as despite stated homeopathic beliefs, it was not possible to purchase this item using a 200th-generation photocopy of a banknote.

> Beautiful Box (Two Stars) I figured I should definitely write this in while drinking my glass of diluted, diluted wine. Why should Big Pharma with their fancy schmancy randomized double-blind clinical trials be getting all the money? Why shouldn't we be giving it to someone who can put a pretty marvelous glucose pill in a green box. I mean, just look at that box--it's beautiful and worth the money right there. It screams environmental awareness. If I had a box like that people would know I was somebody. They would say, "There she comes with a medically looking thingie box. She must be an EMT." Instant adoration, right there. When someone is bleeding out in the street, this is what I want. Big Pharma wants to sell you gauze and have you hold pressure, but don't fall for it. When someone is in v. fib, give him/her a glucose pill with the memory of some electricity. This is much, much cheaper than those defibrillators from Big Pharma. I'm giving this two stars, because I wish I had thought of it and I'm jealous. It's just too hard to be smart and study all your life to do clinical studies and go through a lengthy approval process to market medicine. Getting rich off a box like this has long been a dream of mine.

> Did not help in my potions class. (One Star). Doesn't even come with any eye of newt.

> The dilutions were too strong! (Five Stars) I tried to dilute most of the vials as they were just too strong, curses, they just got even stronger!

> A minor problem (One Star) I dropped the contents of this case by accident, and the tablets became mixed. I did my best to put them back in the right tubes, even going so far as to run high pressure liquid chromatography and gas chromatograms, but I could not detect any difference between the pills so I just did my best. Now I have a dilemma: what if I have heatstroke and accidentally take the remedy for hypothermia? That could be a disaster. The best I can hope for, I guess, is that, like Nelsons before them, they forgot to add the magic to the sugar pills.

> Refills available (One Star) The really good news is that you can now also get refills for these kits. Yup, From your kitchen tap.

> Saved the lives of 10 out of 11 of my children (Five Stars) This kit is amazing and will save countless (more) lives. I gave some of the pills to my children, and 10 out of 11 of them are still alive! That's a 90.9% successful cure rate for all of the many diseases and traumas that might have killed them. 90.9%! That's equivalent to an A-, which was much higher than my son Dilby's GPA ever was. I highly recommend this review and this product!

I have a theory about this that wasn't floated in the article.

Maybe it's the Machiavellian in me, but when I see someone who's being overly generous, especially if I don't know them well, I often wonder if they have an ulterior motive.

There's a great book out there called Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion. One technique mentioned in the book when trying to make a sale or gain an advantage in a negotiation is to do something nice for the other party before any discussions take place.

This can be as simple as buying a drink, or as is often the case with politicians and lobbyists, sending someone on a lavish vacation.

When someone does something nice for you, you tend to feel somewhat indebted. It's a strong social norm to repay favors done for you.

Hence, whenever someone I don't know well does something nice for me, my first thought is, "What do they want from me?"

Obviously this isn't my first thought with most friends and family, but if there's an unusual level of ass-kissing going on it usually means someone's about to ask for a favor.

I think most people who've been taken advantage of in such a situation would tend to be suspicious of overly generous strangers, especially when the generosity falls far outside the social norm.

Looks like you picked up the torch ;) I'll head over to r/StateofTheUnion - but since you took the time to put down a thoughtful perspective, I'll try to return the favor.

The role of government. I find myself thinking in 21st Century terms rather than either 20th Century or 19th Century and in this, I find that Paul's libertarianism (albeit still rough hewn) is much closer than classical Liberalism or the Neo-Liberalism of the Republicans. Perhaps this is why Paul is the only candidate of either Party who seems to connect in some way with the #OWS folks (who are themselves a part of the formation of 21st Century politics). The key principle here is to recognize that bureaucracy in general - be it government or corporate or non-profit is disempowering and corrupting. Consequently, it should be avoided wherever possible and where necessary should be designed to reboot on a periodic basis (a deep reset that can clean out all of the self-reinforcing structures that tend to accumulate). Of utmost import is to avoid situations where corporate and government bureaucracy can connect and co-evolve (e.g. the FCC, the FDA, the DOD, etc.). IMHO, in the 21st century - so long as we can keep the Internet free and open - the edge (the individual) is dramatically empowered. 20th Century top-down hierarchies were largely formed as a result of the discovery of the efficiency of these kinds of bureaucracies during the 30's and, particularly, the War. But this was in a very low bandwidth environment when a real premium was on span of control. Nowadays, bandwidth is wide open and our ability to monitor and police non-mutalistic/maladaptive behavior from the edge is much higher. As a surprisingly illuminating example, consider the music industry vis a vis MP3 and P2P. But for the increasingly intense intervention of government, people at the edge would have completely mopped the floor with these huge media companies. And that's just in the area of music where the human interest is relatively trivial (but the corporate interest - money - is identical to any other corporate interest). Expect individuals to fight harder in more existentially important areas like journalism, health and education; but expect the alternative corporate interests to have roughly the same capabilities and intensity. If corporations were not able to control government, we'd already have broken their control.

We still need some architecture to put it all together of course, but the key is that 20th Century approaches are anachronistic and new more distributed approaches to pretty much everything (education, banking, healthcare, environmental protection) are absolutely necessary.

While Paul is most certainly not the guy to build this 21st Century architecture - he seems the only guy capable of (interested in) getting the obsolete machinery the heck out of the way. Everywhere I look, I see inordinately bloated and delusional (i.e., unresponsive to reality) institutions that are increasingly incapable of either executing on their original raison d'etre or engaging in any form of plausibly adequate reformation. We are in need of a complete enema - from which we can perhaps begin a redesign that is adequate to modern realities.

As for economics and monetary policy - you are right, the gold standard is the wrong answer. If you have an interest in complexity - check out Eric Beinhocker's work. We need to go beyond the 19th Century model of the gold standard, but equally clearly late 20th century fiat currencies are a terrible answer. I'm largely convinced that a mixture of reputation currencies and decentralized digital currencies are likely the right answer. Ron Paul might not be in a position to get this - but again, none of it matters if the Fed is in charge. I'll count on Paul to nix the Fed and then allow people to figure out the solution without getting too much in their way.

Thanks for listening.

Nice read, this sort of recent trend is a true fascination of mine.
A great read has been "Age of Absurdity"

GoldenPants highlighted an important aspect, namely that the article tells you what's wrong but doesn't give enough guidance. This is typical of much modern analysis, particularly psychology, where they can come up with 100 labels for what's wrong with people.
100 words for down, 2 for up.

Here's some light off the cuff advice from my own experience:

Don't believe yourself - This is Buddha advice right here! In this context I would like you to read this as "You don't know what makes you happy". And once this clicks, as an experience rather than a concept, it's like having your eyes opened.

Watch less TV. Pick shows that you enjoy, don't sludge in front of the screen absorbing nonsense.

Meditate. Start it, practice regularly. Change requires time in this field but you can get profound results through disciplined application.
In a similar vein, spend time on your own. It's important.

Examine your aspirations - Have you been raised on the idea that you should own a big house, fancy car, money in the bank, or other material classification of success?

Nurture your relationships - Get a book/audio book/ course on how to improve your relationships. I recently started "The Relationship Cure" by Gottman and am enjoying that so far.

Less Stuff - Buy less, simply. You don't need more clothes (unless you're big into your fashion in which case perhaps it is a hobby for you?). Apply a time delay on impulse purchases. Want to buy a fancy gadget? I wait 1 month and see how I feel then.

A thought experiment I did a while ago was to think what would happen if you were to start fresh on the earth, how would the world you ideally envisage look? See whether you can fit those aspects into the current state of the world.


Someone once told me the only things truly worth working for are inner peace and being closer to other people. In this vein, work on your inner garden, and see how other people are doing! The rest then becomes common sense.

As I stated, this is a favourite topic of mine so an elaborate discussion with like-minded goblins is welcomed.

I agree. I read some history. I heard David Mccullough say that that the best way to learn history is to read good biographies, so I'm really trying to get into them. The Autobiography of Malcolm X is, of course, remarkable. Mccullough said on Fareed Zakaria that there's a biography of Truman that singlehandedly changed historians' view of him from negative to positive. I think I'll read that too.

Thanks for your contribution. I was raised in a math-science-programming family too actually, but I got lucky that my high school had such a phenomenal history department that 10th-12th grade, I poured myself into the subject and honestly saw life anew. I wish you luck with your endeavour, and if I may, I recommend "Western Civiilzation" which is a great textbook on the history of Europe. Honestly, European History is great. If you do get this book, don't waste money on a new edition.

Those assumptions are a really critical part of how economics functions, and the economic models that economists construct are based on social observation of specific markets, embedded in specific cultural milieu, at a specific time. Any logical conclusion is only as good as its assumptions, and the assumptions of any given economic model describe a "perfect" situation that never has, and never will actually exist (although some markets have more closely approximated some models than others). Economic theory is useful, but labeling it as a hard science gives it an undeserved air of universal, objective truth.

Economics's situated reality limits its ability to make any claim toward universal truth, or scientific objectivity. Describing wishy-washy phenomena with math doesn't instantly make the phenomena described conform to that math, and economics is at best a soft science along the lines of psychology. I think academic economists and researchers know this, but the average person seems to uncritically accept economics as a hard science with incontrovertible facts as its conclusions.

The claim to being a hard science lends Economics a veneer of objectivity that it lacks in reality, and the creation of that veneer in the Western academy was a Cold War political project. To win the hearts and minds of the third world, the Capitalist world had to compete with Marxist claims of describing the universal progression of societies into communist utopias. They answered back by creating a theory (modernization theory) that described a universal progression of societies into Capitalist utopias, and by establishing the "science" to back it up (neoclassical economics). Chalmers Johnson has an excellent overview of this part of the ideological wing of the cold war in his book Blowback) That's not to say I'm a communist or anything, but we have to temper our acceptance of economic theory with a healthy examination of its assumptions, an acknowledgement of its historical genesis, and questions about whose interests it serves. We can't say just be wowed by the math and assume that the conclusions must be true.

Easier than becoming a barber, harder than becoming a gardener. It depends on location. I can only speak to the U.S. and as a lock manufacturer not a locksmith.

First let's define scope: a locksmith is someone who does more than copy keys, but does less than manufacture locks. The bread and butter of course is making key copies, but they also charge premiums for lockouts and master keying facilities.

House keys can be copied by a Redbox like robot. More obscure keys (think 1991 Pontiac Firebird with GM VATS resistors) need a trip to a locksmith. You'll also call up a locksmith for lockouts - usually it's a bit different business that serves car lockouts vs home lockouts. Lastly if you are a landlord and need to master-key a building, you'll set up a relationship with a local locksmith to architect the system for you, and return to them when you need to rekey doors. Depending how oldschool this is, it can be a system on pen and paper, MS-DOS (not even joking), or a web dashboard.

In general locksmithing is a semi-protected profession. It is not anywhere near as rigorous as being a doctor or lawyer which is what one initially thinks. The closest thing is a certification process through a private organization similar to computer certs like CISSP or A+ but through an organization like ALOA or SAVTA (a subsidiary of ALOA) and a license through a government agency.

Locksmith certifications are issued by private companies. Locksmith licenses are issued by state governments. Certifications require a test of knowledge (picking, safes, automotive, how to hinge and hang a door). Licenses lean towards a one page proof of identity and application fee.

An ALOA certification doesn't just test knowledge of how to pick locks. It also requires knowledge of:

• Codes and Code Equipment
  
  
• Cylinder Servicing
  
  
• Key Blank Identification
  
  
• Key Duplication
  
  
• Key Impressioning
  
  
• Professional Lock Opening Techniques
  
  
• Lockset Functions
  
  
• Lockset Servicing
  
  
• Basic Master Keying
  
  
• Cabinet, Furniture and Mailbox Locks
  
  License requirements vary from state to state. There are 15 states that license locksmiths (AL,CA, IL, LA, NJ, NC, OK, TN and TX) and 35 that don't. If you don't need a locksmith license you likely need a 'contractor' license if you are doing more than $500 in work. California for instance needs both a locksmith license and a contractor license.
  
  I'll give you two extremes. Virginia is wild. You could start locksmithing today with a drill. See this NPR story for more. Buy some deadbolts at Home Depot for $35 and a drill for $100. Sign up with a callcenter. Wait by the phone. Charge someone $200 to drill their lock.
  
  Texas on the other hand is one of the most regulated environments. If you think taxi cab medallions where hard to come by, try locksmithing in Texas. It's run by a locksmith guild and there are only two paths:
  
  

• Work for two consecutive years at a certified locksmith shop that is a member of Texas Locksmiths Association, Greater Houston Locksmiths Association, Locksmiths Association of San Antonio or North Texas Locksmiths Association
  
  
• Contact the Texas Private Security Bureau and schedule a time to take the Qualified Managers exam.
  
  

• Take a 48 hour basic locksmith course (like the one ALOA offers - coincidentally located in Texas)
  
  
• Attend an approved locksmith trade school (must include a specific curriculum consisting of approximately 600 hours of class time);
  
  
• Work for a licensed lock shop for one year full-time.
  
  
  In general people are for licensing but certification is a hotly debated topic in the locksmith community. ALOA Security Professionals Association, Inc. is a private for profit company in charge of most of the certifications in the U.S. The same arguments for or against are found in pretty much every other private credentialing organization.
  
  Judge for yourself.
  
  But the TLDR for most places is:
  
  

1. Incorporate a business. ($500)
   
   
2. Apply for a State Locksmith/Contractor License (one page application) ($95)
   
   
3. Submit fingerprints and a criminal background check.
   
   If on the other hand, you just want to learn to pick locks get a kit on Amazon for ~$20.
   
   Bill Philips' books on locksmithing are pretty good. See both The Complete Book of Locks and Locksmithing and Locksmithing, 2nd Edition

> If we could acknowledge that good people can unwittingly be part of a bad system, so that we could tackle the systemic issues without pointing fingers, then we could make some progress

Strong finish, and I hope we can all hop aboard that train. That said, time for some form finger pointing. (haha, apologies, sarcasm :-)

> The fact that the pay gap exists at all is a problem that needs solving.

The whole premise of the article is that there is no gap in pay, only differences in how one chooses to work. Apparently, studies show that men work longer hours, in more dangerous, uncomfortable jobs, and prioritize their job over family. Source: OP's article, and [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Men-Earn-More-Startling/dp/0814472109) book, which I read ages ago. Yes, the title is highly unfortunate, may even strike one with modest sensibilities as grotesque. Its important to not that the author - a man - was once a prominent feminist, but who later because a Men's Rights Activist? Puke. I hate that term. It shouldn't have to exist, except for the unfortunate fact that it may have to soon.

All I'm saying is that much of the data in the article above is either old news; or else a better, more accurate analysis of old news (one should hope).

You may enjoy [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Never-Remember-Women-Forget-ebook/dp/B001LF3YHE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396987980&sr=1-1&keywords=why+men+never+remember) book as a way of approaching a common ground. I found it fascinating, and its been one of the most helpful books I've ever read.

In it you will find that there are very good reasons why a man is 4 times more likely to bargain over salary, and why a vast majority of engineers are men. It has far less to do with power structures or discrimination, and more to do with what testosterone does to the hominid brain. Most great mathematicians are male, and probably always will be. So also, most great serial killers and psychopaths are male, and always will be. In a vacuum, males will more naturally enjoy activities such an engineering, gaming, gambling, doing drugs, and other risky behavior. The reason for all of these attributes? Testosterone's impact on the brain! Dont believe me? Look it up!

Women use FAR more unique words per unit time, are FAR better in social situation, and, in my option, are the better half of humanity.

Buuuut, men and women are really fucking different! And, there are reasons for this. There are inherent differences between people, and the sexes. That's just the way it is.

Now, how does all of this all relate to creating a fair and equitable society? That is the tough part, and is open for debate.

As per this issue of why a "pay gap" exists. After reading this articles - and ones like it for the umpteenth time - I think its okay to entertain the idea that maybe the "pay-gap" has at least something to do with the inherently different choices either sex is likely to make.

Edit: spelling

This is what Zen Buddhism and other Buddhist schools of thought have been teaching for thousands of years, and perhaps others that I am unaware of. The sense of "self" is a preservation mechanism, a leftover device from our primitive ancestors.

So, too, are fear, jealousy, and anger.

To experience no-self first hand, give this a try:
sit still for 30 minutes and focus on your posture, your body's natural architecture, for 10 minutes. Then, while maintaining awareness of your body, expand your awareness to your breath, welcoming each inbreath and outbreath. Become lost in the sensations. After you have become fully, calmly, and distinctly aware of your breath, you can move your attention to your thoughts.
Keep in mind the following when perceiving your thoughts:

• you are not your thoughts.
  
• you don't have to believe your thoughts.
  

• your thoughts can get in the way of your experience of reality.
  

  
  

  Imagine your thoughts melting away. And then, let that imagination process dissolve until you are no longer trying to do anything at all, you are simply being. With practice, you can enter a state of consciousness with no thoughts, no ideas, and no expectations. This will get you closer to No-Self.
  

  
  

  
  

  EDIT: thanks for all the great replies, everyone. I thought I should clarify a few things based on some of the responses I got.
  

  
  

  *Your meditation will not always be perfect. If you weren’t satisfied with your session, give yourself grace and allow yourself to try again later. If you enjoyed your session, smile and be thankful for your mind. Either way, congratulate yourself for trying something new. Whatever you experienced, allow yourself to be OK with it. It’s not as important to feel happy during meditation as it is to actually take the time to practice submitting your mind to your own will. Maybe start a meditation journal and write down your experiences, which will help you put each session into perspective. The key is to gain a better understanding of yourself.
  

  
  

  *Different brains have different tendencies. Not everyone can easily attain calm focus. For some people, it only takes a few sessions to be initiated into deep meditative states. For others, it can take months or years of dedicated training.
  

  
  

  A [book](http://www.amazon.com/Minds-Own-Physician-Scientific-Meditation/dp/1572249684/ref=bxgy_cc_b_img_b for those interested) for those interested in the science behind meditation.
  

  
  

  And another for those just looking to get initiated with meditating.
  

  
  

  It is not necessary to use music while meditating, however when I first started it helped me out a lot. Here is a great playlist for meditation music.
  

  
  

  I use this app on my iPhone to help me meditate. It lets you set a timer that goes off at specific intervals. I'm sure there are others for Android users. Or you can use an egg timer, watch timer, microwave...
  

  
  

  For any other questions you guys have, feel free to PM me; I don't want to hijack CARBOXYL's thread anymore. I don't claim to be an expert on meditation but I'm willing and able to help anyone on their path.
  

  
  

  Practice and enjoy.
  

  
  

  )

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/1596913991

The author's mentor is Joseph Stiglitz, if you have heard of him. He claims it is the free trade agreements that changed everything. Apparently Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton fought over how to run the US economy back when the US was being founded - and Hamilton won. Jefferson wanted free trade, Hamilton wanted tariffs, subsidies, etc. His model was used for about 200 years and the US became the biggest economic power using his ideas. Only when we changed the laws did the US start to have trouble.

The technology you talk about also means goods are cheaper to produce locally too. Do you think that 100 years ago we couldn't have mexicans making goods for less and shipping them on a train over the border? The difference is that 100 years ago, those goods would be hit with a tariff, but today they are not. The workforce was always larger and foreign markets were always an issue. This is why tariffs were put in place.

The important thing is that even if Chinese workers were paid what US workers were paid china would still have an advantage over the US. They allow their factories to dump waste in the stream outside, abuse workers, force long work hours, unsafe working conditions, etc. A US factory will NEVER compete with this. So let's set up free trade agreements with Germany or France, but not China.

The argument about technology is a bad one. Technology has grown... forever. We should have seen a slow but continuous change over the last 200 years because we have had steady technological advances. But instead we saw a HUGE change about 20 years ago when we started signing free trade agreements. Do you think it is an accident that the US set up a free trade agreement with a communist country? We put economic sanctions on Iraq for 10 years, Cuba for 50 years... but we open up free trade agreements with China?

As someone who used to smoke a pack a day for years and then quit, I can say with complete confidence that an addiction to cigarettes is all in your head.

It is a fabricated product of the media. Realizing that from a book I read was how I was able to quit and never look back.

> manipulating the process

who isn't manipulating the process? Gitlin certainly would like to, hopes the press will, and believes they can -- this is a pretty clear advocacy piece, is it not? read the final sentence should you have any doubt:

> If they don’t put down their softballs, if they don’t stop letting simple-minded questions substitute for serious exploration, they’ll share responsibility for enabling — and helping elect — President Donald J. Trump.

so let's not pretend objectivity is the goal. it is what Gitlin presumes is a convenient means to his desired end.

but that's where he is wrong. he either does not understand how influence works or is pretending not to.

as others have noted: "Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite." that's what the science says, and it's dead right.

it's also something dyed-in-the-wool journalists have known since the dawn of journalism. every piece is an advocacy piece, no matter what it pretends to be. and Trump is certainly keenly aware of that truth, even if Gitlin isn't.