(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best systems & planning books

I run my own little title insurance agency. Didn't go to school for it, though my field is heavily involved with real estate law and being an English major coincidentally did help a lot (close reading, textual analysis, etc.).

I got into it after my dad, who is a mortgage broker, first tried to get me to follow in his business but I have zero interest in that side of it. So when I was finishing up college he said: "Well you read and write all the time in college, and there's this thing called title insurance where you can at least make money at it." I looked into it, it did seem a good fit for my skills, so I got licensed and hit the road to get clients...turned out well.

BUT it turned out well because I started in 2005. Real estate bubble times. My success was pretty much my timing. Had I started even a year or two later, I'd not have made even half what I have.

I do enjoy what I do, because it's almost like being a real estate attorney through the back door (title insurance used to be done by attorneys in fact). I can't give legal advice or anything, but I have to know quite a bit of local real estate law and many of my clients are attorneys. When a title issue comes up we often hash out the problems & solutions together and it's fun. My respect for attorneys has definitely gone up tremendously, and the jokes about them are unfair overall. Yes there are some douchebag ones with big egos, but there are people like that in every field.

Would I recommend others get into this? Depends. I would not recommend starting your own agency like I did. Small agencies like mine are dropping like flies, both due to tougher regulations (the CFPB, which I actually support, is nonetheless cracking down hard on my industry now) and due to the best days of U.S. real estate now behind us. There just isn't the volume of business or number of clients out there to build a new network, especially with how regulated our industry is when it comes to sales/spending on clients (in my state I'm not allowed to spend more than $20 a YEAR on a client...that means I can't even take them out to lunch in many spots, not if I want to buy them some donuts for Christmas or something...it's nuts).

But I will recommend this: if you're an English or History major and don't mind an okay salary working for a larger title ins. company, it's worth checking out as a sort of "wild card" option instead of the usual teaching path that English/History majors go on.

Which leads to one final note: what I actually went to school for was to become a teacher. I got certified and everything, did my student teaching, taught 2nd & 5th grades. The short answer to that whole path is: only do teaching if you really can't picture yourself doing anything else and don't mind if no one else appreciates you for it. The KIDS do (honestly they really do, even if they act like they don't), and if that's enough to keep you going...well then maybe go for it. It's tough though. (If anyone wants more details on my experience pursuing teaching, feel free to PM me.)

Oh, and ALL of you need to watch this 15 minute video to understand the labor environment of the future we're moving into. Automation and bots are making rapid strides into nearly every field. For example: Think "I'm a doctor, I'll be fine"? Think again:

Humans Need Not Apply

If that video intrigued you, definitely read this book too.

Don’t have a food truck related business plan. Bit I’ve written several in different industries including for a restaurant.

You can use any general template for a business plan but you can probably skip some chapters or only spend a few words to fill in those chapters.

The most important thing will be you financial planning. The numbers must make sense. I’ve posted this spreadsheet I use for food truck planning before. Hope it helps.

Now to be able to complete the financial planning you will need to have a pretty good understanding of your product, market, competitors and business/revenue model. Those are also your key chapters in the business plan.

The product chapter should detail what you plan to offer (the menu), details on the car, etc. The goal is for the reader to better understand what you idea is all about.

The market chapter will highlight numbers that are important for your business. Are you primarily going to be serving the public? You’ll need population statistics down to the neighborhoods you are interested in serving. Serving businesses or festivals? Get some numbers to see where the biggest demand will be. A good practice here is to look at things from all perspectives and rank neighborhoods or business areas or festivals by attractiveness. The numbers should look good or the business is probably not viable in the area (no faking numbers though!)

The competitors chapter will build on the previous two. Here you detail how many food trucks or restaurants are in each area. The goal is to identify market segments that are not heavy with competition but still have potential for good demand. Are all of you competitors aiming for a specific area? No indian mexican fusion truck in Area 1? Here you’ll get the sense for opprotunities. If you don’t have a specific truck idea you could make a truck that fits the gaps in the market (and make the product chapter reflect this research you’ve done). If you have a specific concept then you’ll need to discuss your unique value proposition in the market segments you are interested in. Would you be the only truck with this type of food? Will you be cheaper? Faster? Etc.

Finally, the last important chapter is the business model. This will build on all the research you’ve done so far. Perhaps you’ve identified that the public market is way saturated but there is potential in the B2B market and festival market. You’ll need to develop a pricing strategy to meet the market demands but also meets your needs to run the business. Here you essentially lay out your plans for making money. As part of this chapter (or as separate chapter) you will discuss your go to market strategy.

As a result of doing the above research you’ll be able to do the financial planning. You will need to get more specific when adding numbers to the spreadsheet, but you’ll have a better understanding of what numbers are required. Market and competitors will influence the demand for your truck. Product will affect your startup costs and variable costs and fixed costs. Adding this all together you can start setting up a profit and loss statement to test if you revenue model is actually going to be viable!

This is a lot to digest. But all those chapters are readily available in BP templates and examples. You’ll need to weed out the unimportant stuff. The goal with any business plan should be first be for the owner to see which strategy makes sense and have a plan if things don’t go as expected (which happens often).

As a final note there are also alternative forms of creating a plan or coming up with a great business model. My personal favorite is the Business Model Generation book It’s a quick read and a fantastic approach to quickly develop and validate different business models!

Hope this helps :)

u/Erebus_of_darkness, u/Osroes-the-300th

There is a helpful and basic introductory series called "History of Imperial China". I have not read their books on the Yuan & Ming or the Qing, but I liked what I saw in their book on the Tang. They're basic, topical, and makes for an easy overview.

In America, the "New Qing" school mostly dominates discussion of Qing Dynasty history. China tends to view the Manchu Qing (and the Mongol Yuan) as part of a multicultural "China" state that has existed since time immemorial. "New Qing" disputes that by essentially arguing that the Manchu only considered "China" as one part of their empire, and thus ruled over Buddhist theocratic Tibet, Buddhist nomadic Mongolia, and Muslim Xinjiang (among others) differently from how it administered core China. This obviously ruffles feathers in China, since this ethnic-focused historiography seems to be trying to start something, but both sides of the ocean can probably agree that it at least provides a way of looking at things, including at ethnic relationships in Qing China. For New Qing, China Marches West is perhaps the most salient right now. You can also look at The Manchus (and look at The Tibetans in the same series while you're at it, since Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetans played important roles in the Ming, Qing, and modern China). Mark Eliot also is a prominent "New Qing" professor, and this seems to be his hallmark book, The Manchu Way.

During the Ming Dynasty, the Neo-Confucianism ideology solidified and became the guiding philosophy of East Asia. For a primary source peek at this philosophy, this translation of Wang Yangming seems a decent start.

The Forbidden City is the crowning achievement of Chinese palatial architecture, a culmination of imperial wisdom transmitted across thousands of years. No less, this book is a great, short introductory resource that is visually pleasing. I don't think it's a direct translation of the author's authoritative Chinese works, but he is the foremost expert on the architecture of the Forbidden City, and Nancy Steinhardt is an excellent authority on traditional Chinese architecture.

See if you can't find this book, The Class of 1761, in a library, going through the minutiae of the Chinese imperial examination system. I plan to look at this as well.

Chinese literature and opera came into maturity during the Ming and Qing Dynasty. So if you're feeling for long reads, read any of the Four Classic Novels of China. In particular, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, while not covering Ming or Qing (written in late Yuan/early Ming) will let you interface with literally any East Asian since they will know all the anecdotes and the Dream of the Red Chamber is noted for its extreme depth (entire departments devoted to studying it) and particular insight into mid-Qing society.

For opera, probably the Peony Pavilion is good enough, as a classic of Kunqu opera, the OG Chinese opera.

And honestly, just go to chinaknowledge.de ... It's a very comprehensive website surprisingly enough.

Once you start accepting orphans, how are you going to feel if you have to turn away children because you've reached your limit or they don't fit your age group? This is one of those things a lot of people struggle with.

I think that having some foreign volunteers is great, but I'd caution too much about depending on foreigners volunteering (or being paid) for too many things. Remember that any time you can hire locals you're providing a much larger contribution to the local economy than when someone volunteers for a year. Not to say you won't need volunteers or use them, but try to be careful to use locals when you can.

I'm not sure what you have as far as land, but hopefully you can set up a small scale farm, so as to provide most of the food for your orphanage as well as have some to sell/trade for the things you don't grow/raise. Vegetables/bananas/Chickens/etc are all fairly easy to raise and provide a return very quickly. Also, children can learn valuable skills as well.

While their may be profit in minibuses and other ventures, remember that you're a foreigner. It can be difficult to deal with all the petty theft and extra bribes that come with the knowledge that the owner is a Mzungu. Not to say don't try-but be careful.

Africa is an awesome place, and I often long to go back. You'll learn to love it too. It does have some issues from time to time though, as you're noticing. Long term you are likely going to want to invest in a generator and perhaps some solar panels. Until you're more developed and established though you probably can't plan out that need.

These books don't quite relate to orphanages, but more in general to Africa and aid throughout the world-if you haven't read them I'd recommend you get your hands on them as it can help with understanding a lot of why things are the way they are in Africa.

Africa Doesn't Matter

The Fate of Africa

Festival Elephants and the Myth of Global Poverty

And not quite related, but a nice story from a wonderful woman (who's sadly now passed away) that went to Africa in her youth, lived there her entire life, and ran an orphanage: Land of a Thousand Hills (Disclaimer: I lived very close to her house at Mugongo and I knew her as a child; I last saw her in 2005 on my last visit to Rwanda.)

Sadly, my work keeps me busy where I am and I don't really get a chance to volunteer... I'd love to transition to working with an aid agency though instead of what I do now. No luck so far, but I'll keep trying...

I might be able to offer some sentiments on this topic.

My process is like this: You sit down with a pen a nice blank piece of paper. You then stare at the paper until a thought of a practical nature pops into your mind. You write this thought down. Then you wait for a new one to pop in. These waits can be a good moment to meditate. When you get the feeling that no more thoughts about practical matters will pop into your head, you examine what you've written down. When you have gotten some idea about the content of the different thoughts, you re-write them into the task needed to fulfill them. You can rearrange these tasks in a way that fits your personal method of thinking. You can re-order them by category, by importance, by which order you are going to complete them or by any other method you deem worthy. I, for instance, spend some time dividing the tasks into boxes that cover different categories, and in the individual boxes I list them by importance. I then draw small icons to each box, so that finances will get a dollar bill, while laundry gets a pair of trousers. I do this because it makes it easier for me to have an overview of the whole list. It is simply a quirk of my personal way of thinking that I've tried to incorporate into the list.

This sheet of paper will be the foundational tool of your plan. It acts as external memory and "frees up ram" in your conscious mind, which is a very pleasant feeling indeed.

You can expand on the list by writing down small notes to your thoughts about different tasks or by your overall reaction to the practical shades of your existence. This can help you uncover defects in your approach or indeed whole new ways to solve problems.

It can be good to know the difference between strategy and tactics when thinking about planning. Strategy is the overall plan which is made out of a long set of tactics. So your strategy might be to eliminate stress in your life and free your mind of recurring thoughts about practical matters, so as to have better use of your mental faculties. The list and the various ways you deal with the individual tasks are tactics and these should be constructed in a way that conforms with the strategy, so that there will be a synergy betwixt all the tactics that then drives the strategy. I usually picture a pile of grain. Each grain is a tactic and the collected pile is the strategy.

I had good reasons to want to eliminate stress in my life, so I worked on understanding what would stress me and I then made sure that the different tactics I used to reduce the overall burden of practicalities where each of a non-stressful nature (so that they were aligned, so to speak, with the strategy).

Similar methods can be used to deal with different problems.

Quite a lot of science and study has been done on this, and I can recommend looking into game-theory if one is interested in such matters. If one is more interested in a more general non-academic read, then I can recommend How Life Imitates Chess by Garry Kasparov (universally hailed as the best chessplayer in the history of the game). In there he explains a lot about what chess has taught him about the decision-making process and how it can be applied in different everyday scenarios.

Like creating a successful business, it's not so much about following a "do these 5 things" article. It's more about solving hard problems that take time, discipline, and thoughtfulness.

I recently read an outstanding book that I can't recommend enough. It focuses on this very topic. It's called "Finish Big". Here's a link to it on amazon.

In short, the author's general philosophy is to create a healthier, better running business for yourself, because that will ultimately increase the value of the business in the eyes of a purchaser. Namely:

• Reduce the businesses dependency upon you
  
• Obvious basics: have a high margin and show good growth
  
• Make the business more durable to market changes
  
• Learn to appreciate how long the sale process actually takes
  
• Learn to appreciate how you really need help during a sale process as everyone involved in it has different motivations than you do and you probably have the least experience of all of them.
  
  Read this book. You will thank yourself and it'll receive a permanent place on the bookshelf!

About to graduate with my BS in accounting. You don't need to go for a degree, perhaps a few business classes may help you but many of them will be useless. Audit, Fiance, Tax Accounting, ect are topics you will never need to deal with in large. Most accounting classes are more theory than practice. Its very easy to graduate from a university without ever touching an accounting program outside of excel. Learning Quickbooks will be great, perhaps take a book keeping class. While you can pay someone to do your books I think its important for you to understand what is happening financially since its your company.

Create a business plan. No skipping out on this. Something like 70-80% of businesses never had a business plan before they opened their doors. You need to calculate out all your expenses and how much revenue you will need to make to break even. You also need to figure out all the costs to start up your business, I think espresso machines can run around $5,000 new.

Perhaps overkill for a coffee shop but a good book. Other great books are out there. Look around and ask. I realize you may never go to a bank to get financing but you still need to do this I can't stress it enough.

As for a bank I suggest a credit union. They tend to be more friendly and helpful. Also fuck Bank of America.

A business license will be required anywhere you go. You also have to consider things such as insurance. If your a Sole Proprietership you have "unlimited responsibility for all losses and debts." What happens if a worker falls and breaks their arm? If they sued they could go after your personal property.

Check your local area for a small business society. In my area we have Small Business Development Center. They have business and quickbooks classes, they aid you in creating a business plan, and much more than I can mention. Just for example read this page http://northcoastsbdc.org/hiring . Odds are you didn't know that you needed to set up an EIN, collect workers W4 and I9. Stuff like this would be greatly helped by someone who has run a restaurant before as someone else mentioned but that could be unfeasible.

Edit: if anything is unclear or you have any questions please ask. I just finished a 30 mile bike ride so I'm a bit out of it.

Hello!

A few of my family members use concierge medical practices, and it has been truly life changing for them. For example, my mom recently signed up for one. She has several chronic conditions, including a deadly peanut allergy. She came back from the appointment and said "Hmm! I guess I should get an Epipen. I've always carried around Benadryl , because I thought Benadryl and Epipens were the same thing." She's a brilliant lawyer, but no one had ever explained the difference between these two allergy treatments to her, so she didn't know. It isn't that she lacked the capacity to understand the difference, it's just that no doctor ever told her. Her doctor also found that 3 of her prescriptions had lapsed, and she just stopped taking them because "she felt okay." To me, this exemplifies the power of concierge medicine- doctors have the time to sit down and really dig through a patient's medical history, and work with them to fill in both medical and educational lapses. My mom said that she felt like a partner in her health care management, as opposed to a passive bystander. It's definitely worth looking into and I'm glad you're interested in it.

I couldn't find any books specifically for medical students, but I found a few books on Amazon that might be a good start (I haven't read any of them but they are highly (albeit limitedly) reviewed):

• https://www.amazon.com/Concierge-Medicine-System-Best-Healthcare/dp/1442207086
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Doctors-Guide-Concierge-Medicine-Considering-ebook/dp/B00TM7A3AO
  
  Not specifically about concierge medicine, but books that offer perspectives on changing healthcare models:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Patient-Will-See-You-Now/dp/0465054749/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0465054749&pd_rd_r=V9GJ7V4PYD6060BY00TW&pd_rd_w=1yzmg&pd_rd_wg=dsl8I&psc=1&refRID=V9GJ7V4PYD6060BY00TW
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/The-Creative-Destruction-of-Medicine-How-the-Digital-Revolution-Will-Create-Better-Health-Care/dp/0465061834/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Healthcare-Disrupted-Generation-Business-Strategies/dp/1119171881/ref=pd_sim_14_6?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1119171881&pd_rd_r=36ES9DJQGW5J8GM54JR2&pd_rd_w=mZaBC&pd_rd_wg=LKCW3&psc=1&refRID=36ES9DJQGW5J8GM54JR2
  
  Take care!

1. I presume you mean incorporate and not copyright. I'm not sure what copyright has to do with your title.
   
2. Sure, you can say it. It's not true (specifically the CEO part, if you're not incorporated) but no one is going to care right now
   
3. Spend the time to do things properly. Reading even a basic book will help. I don't know if this is a good book or not but it's better than nothing – https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Business-All-One-Dummies/dp/1119049105. Part of running a business is being prepared not only for failure but also for success. Take care of this stuff now. Not doing so can hurt you tremendously in the future.

Your best bet might be to try out a social media analytics platform to see all the different metrics in action.

This is pretty much a textbook for digital marketing, very well regarded: https://www.amazon.ca/Digital-Marketing-Strategy-Integrated-Approach/dp/074947470X/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1482359607&sr=8-19&keywords=marketing

The Whuffie Factor is older, but it's still solid: http://www.thewhuffiefactor.com/ Tons of insight about community building, rather than link selling.

Social Media - The First 2,000 Years is great for understanding social media in-depth. It explains the appeal of different social media platforms, and looks to their origins in history.

The Art of Immersion is another good one on social media and entertainment, from New York University. https://www.amazon.ca/Art-Immersion-Generation-Remaking-Hollywood/dp/0393341259/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JSFGKDE8WQC6FVMZ3G0K

Well, the Cambridge History of China is a great resource, but I don't know if you can find that in eBook form or not. Those tomes cover just about everything you'd need.

If you're interested in modern Chinese history, The Search for Modern China is an excellent book.

For the Song dynasty: The Age of Confucian Rule, and Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion. Just remember that the books can't cover everything, so occasionally they oversimply - particularly Kuhn's book and its overemphasis on Confucianism.

Oh, and one more recommendation for now: the Shi Ji (Records of the Grand Historian).

Wow. So there's a lot here - are you asking for purely written books or are websites OK?

First, look in your local bookstore! That being said, Amazon has a ton (these are ones I've read):

Gar Alperovitz - America Beyond Capitalism

William Whyte - Making Mondragon

Marina Sitrin - Horizontalism

Frank T Adams - Putting Democracy to Work

Encrico Masseti - Coop: Made in the USA

Seymour Melman - After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy

David Schweickart - After Capitalism


Also, take a look at this PDF on Tech Worker coops which I contributed to.

Amazon has a bunch I haven't read.


Websites (which list quite a few books/articles relevant here):

http://usworker.coop/education
http://usworker.coop/faceted_search/

http://www.american.coop/
http://american.coop/node/119

http://www.geo.coop/
http://www.geo.coop/replication-of-arizmendi

And finally, the article that got me started on the road to cooperating:
A Cooperative Manifesto by Tim Huet.

Films - there are a lot, but the only ones that are easy to get a hold of are:

The Take

Capitalism: A Love Story - though this only has a small portion on coops and some more in the extras

Some More:

This Way Out

Shift Change - not out yet but based on the trailer it looks off the hook.

Argentina Turning Around

Some good books to begin with in my opinion:

Okun – Equality and Efficieny



Atkinson - Inequality


Milanovic – Global Inequality and The have and haves not

Piketty – Capital in the 21st century
or a summary (I read the book not the summary so I can't tell you that the summary is done well)

I think Piketty matters because it illustrates why the distinction between wealth and income matters. I know Piketty also wrote The economics of Inequality, but I haven't yet read it. I know some here will probably nuance his findings, but for this topic it is still a good source as it does explain why the difference matters.


Some of these (Okun for example) are relatively old. Thus take the conclusions with a grain of salt. At the same time, he (as well as most books here) provide both a factual as well as (in my view important in this discussion) an intuitive and normative explanation of their point. That's also why I'd personally prefer books over papers in this case.

Milanovic in Global inequality does a good job (in my opinion) of explaining the differences between within and across border inequality and why it matters. In the have and haves not he also delves into how inequality could be bad. Plus that is also quite a readable book for someone not too in interested/familiar with economics.

Reading some of these is interesting because they will argue multiple sides, leaving you with quite a nuanced view. After Okun you will probably see inequality as quite necessary, whilst you will not be as sure anymore after reading Milanovic.

Thanks everyone for the great questions! I am going to close out this conversation, but maybe we’ll find some time to do another AMA soon. FYI, if you want to see what we have been up to at Aspen Ideas Festival check out the video/audio from our discussions:
Andrew: https://www.aspenideas.org/speaker/andrew-mcafee
Erik: https://www.aspenideas.org/speaker/erik-brynjolfsson

Also, check out (and buy!) our new book "Machine | Platform | Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future"

https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Platform-Crowd-Harnessing-Revolution/dp/0393254291

One of the best resources I found for visualization design was a book named Good Charts. Rather than just giving visual examples to choose from, it goes into visual design theory and explains why some work better than others.


Good Charts

But "extraordinarily" rare events are commonplace according to anything but. In fact, they're commonplace according to statistician David J. Hand. So I think your definition is off.

But the bigger question is why you'd want to have to different standards for historical things.

>Please clarify: are you stating that I stated a claim has to be absolutely true?

How else would one interpret this statement of yours: This lesser claim of a murder can not be found absolutely true, then the greater claim of jesus's resurrection is not absolutely true and therefore possibly not true.?

>Because this post is to Christians who believe the claim that the resurrection occurred, is absolutely (incontrovertible) true, without a possibility that is possibly not true.

Oh, you are asking this question to people who think that there are things that can be proven to be "absolutely, incontrovertible true without a possibility that is possibly not true", which is a logical impossibility. I don't defend the logically impossible.

The improbable isn't that rare. That's the core concept to grasp. I'm pretty confident there's a pop-science book about this exact concept if you want some light reading.

Found it. It's The Improbability Principle. I haven't read the book, but plenty of buyers seem happy with it.

A lot of this imperialism was well under way in the 1700s (and if we're talking other earlier Chinese dynasties, had been going on for centuries). My understanding is that a large part of the Qing imperialism revolved around control neighboring regions, whether through conquest like Central Asia, or as tributaries and vassals like Vietnam and Korea.

I highly recommend this book for an overview on the Qing, and it does cover their variety of imperialism: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ZYEZ9A/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

An interesting point that was raised in that book (if I recall correctly) was how even late in its life, when beset by the West and Japan, it was still engaging in imperialistic policies, such as how the mess in Korea in the late 1800s was partly a result of Japan and the Qing's attempts to control the peninsula for their ends, and how in some ways their goals weren't wholly different (I am not justifying Japan here of course, this is more an observation that as much as the Qing was a 'victim' it was still big enough to mess around other states too).

Super old story.

It's widely believed that the Taliban stopped opium production that year because of a massive surplus they had built up. They sent a representative that year to the UN in an attempt to gain legitimacy internationally. These men used Islam whatever way they wanted to. The drug trade is far too profitable to actually ban it.

http://www.amazon.com/Opium-Uncovering-Politics-Pierre-Arnaud-Chouvy/dp/0674051343/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311085695&sr=1-3
^A very good book on the subject. And fairly recent.

Thanks. I will check that out. This is another great book on the subject http://www.amazon.es/The-Improbability-Principle-Coincidences-Miracles/dp/0374175349

Just to add, there are a number of sales styles and techniques, and not 1 is suitable for everything under the sun (or moon).

That being said I kind of enjoyed https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Complex-Sale-Compete-Stakes/dp/0470533110 which I think is classed as Consultative Selling? (Did close sales using the methodology for large CAPEX equipment, but it does not apply for all types of products) The more tools the better.

Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High!

There's actually a book I saw recently about miracles where the author makes the claim that, statistically, miracles are very common. I haven't read the book sop I can't give a personal anecdote, but here's the link.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0374175349/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_uS-rtb1VVP49N

Now supernatural miracles still haven't been proven to ever happen, but this is something you can show to someone who says God works miracles in their life.

It's almost definitely just a coincidence. I bought this book recently and it explains the math behind coincidences and why they're actually very very common.

You may need this before trying to argue about operating a small-medium sized business.

And an economics 101 book might help too.

When you're done we can meet for coffee and see if you understand how the real world works.

https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-platform-for-Dummies/dp/1119049105/

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Link: [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0374175349/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_uS-rtb1VVP49N

Now](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0374175349/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_uS-rtb1VVP49N

Now)

• UK: amazon.co.uk
  
• Spain: amazon.es
  
• France: amazon.fr
  
• Germany: amazon.de
  
• Japan: amazon.co.jp
  
• Canada: amazon.ca
  
• Italy: amazon.it
  
• China: amazon.cn
  
  
  This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting).

michael porter has classic books. Also try business model generation.

And, I shit you not. I started reading this last night and then you post this.
so far pretty interesting book, You should also look up the Baader Meinhoff effect

You've made very apparent that reading is a difficult task for you. I play on both consoles.

Time is a direct correlation to money, I think there a book for dummies that might shed some light for you. Here's a link for it on amazon, it comes in paper back.

http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Business-All-One-Dummies/dp/1119049105

If they truly wanted us in the dark and wanted to cash-out, then why would they even bother with this subreddit? Why even have a pro league? Why would Ubisoft employees interact on podcasts? Its ignorant to even think they would leave us in the dark on every subject. Not to mention it's a horrible business model, we essentially are clients to Ubisoft. We buy and play their games.

>I often question whether nonphysical things can exist...

I phrase it differently--what reason do I have to think nonphysical things do exist? I can't know that something invisible, magical, undetectable can't exist, since I'm not omniscient. That doesn't mean "hmm maybe there are invisible genies." We have to remember that not knowing that something can't exist isn't an argument for it existing. Me not having a reason to think a given thing exists doesn't mean I'm declaring that it doesn't exist, nor am I "dismissing" the idea for all time. I just want to know what reason I have, at present, to think it actually exists.

>Darth Vader, for example, is something that does not exist.

Well, he's known to be a fictional character. But how about the chupacabra? Unicorns? Both were (or are, by some) thought to be real. We have reported sightings. I can't know for sure they aren't real, but I can ask if we have ample reasons to consider them real.

> One of the most common arguments for gods I see is that of experience.

Experiences are interpreted. So though we may say "People experienced God," what that means is that people had an experience that they interpreted as being God. The basis for that interpretation, the tenability of their inference, should be critically examined.

>Someone has an idea or is inspired out of nowhere, against any meaningful material connection (such as Jung's synchronicity).

There are different ways to frame that, though. Jung saw deep meaning in coincidences. But when we see meaning in coincidences, the meaning is provided by our own interpretation. The meaning is in us, not in the coincidence. And much of that meaning is, in my experience, due to us underestimating how probable coincidences really are.

>Could this not be evidence of nonphysical effects on nonphysical aspects of ourselves

What reason is there to think it is? Coincidences happen. They are shocking and eerie only to the extent that we are ignorant of statistical thinking. When we learn about statistical thinking or skepticism in general we learn that coincidences should be expected.