I've never worked at Dalio's hedge fund, Bridgewater, but after we studied their culture and performance in grad school, I did consider working there & spoke to a number of their alum (full disclosure: I did apply and was rejected in later rounds).
Bridgewater is easily one of the most consistently performant hedge funds in history, so it's hard to argue there isn't anything at all to ways in which they're different. Capital-T-Truth is worth its weight in gold when your business is predicting the future.
My conclusion was that the system for which Principles sets the stage really does seem like a sort of Truth-utopia. I say that with no hint of irony--it really does sound like bliss to have so many unproductive communication complexities actively suppressed. If you've ever felt like work shouldn't be about navigating complex political landscapes, or other people's egos and insecurities, but instead about the team's mission, then a system built on Dalio's principles is probably up your alley.
In practice, it turns out it might be a little tricky. Understandably, there's a tremendous stigma at Bridgewater with becoming defensive when confronted with your potential 'wrongness.' It's one of the things they screen heavily for: can you receive aggressive critique of your argument, often bordering on personal attack, without feeling threatened or defensive--ie, while still maintaining a relentless pursuit of Truth?
Problems start (again, as I understand it second-hand) at the point where people use Truth-seeking methodology like a cudgel. Consider a simple example, not significantly altered from a friend's first-hand experience:
You: "I think we ought to do X, because of [etc etc]"
Colleague: "What? It feels like you're not even considering Y. I think what we're seeing is that you're consistently refusing to get your head out of your ass and see [etc etc]. You have a bias that leads you towards X, and it's making you useless to this project."
You: "I understand your argument and I think it's fair to think I have that bias. However, I've thought a lot about that particular bias, and I've concluded that it isn't a bias because of [etc etc]. So I think the premise of your objection is flawed."
In this example, were 'You' responding to the merits of the argument presented, or were you being defensive? How do you know? How do you disagree with arguments couched in critiques of your objectiveness, self-awareness, etc?
The conclusion I ultimately settled on was that so-called 'social niceties' don't just serve as kid-gloves for fragile egos. They're also a reliable mechanism of giving people the space to engage in honest discussions about their own short-comings as they relate to the argument.
Because the Colleague in this example had been conditioned to understand that more aggressive arguments can functionally shut-out a dissenting opinion (because, again, of the stigma around defensiveness), I'd argue he/she had incentive to act aggressively.
In some respects, the Colleague in this example has failed to check their own emotions (irritation, frustration, etc.)--a slip-up that isn't nearly as vilified as failing to control emotions when confronted. This sort of asymmetry, I think, is one of the bigger risks in this type of system.
Like I said at the top, though, I ultimately did apply. My reasoning was simple: every work culture has its baggage (I'd come from investment banking), and I felt this baggage was more manageable than most other types I was familiar with.
Now that I'm building my own company, I've been re-reading Dalio's stuff. I really respect what Bridgewater is trying to do culturally, and I'm anxious to see if parts of it are transferable to a more tech-oriented workplace (and one where the average worker doesn't gross $200k+, fwiw).
A huge reason for that success is Mr. Dalio himself. I don't mean that in an abstract he designed the business well sense. I mean he literally and actively managed a huge part of their money for a long time overriding entire groups often (and beating them). What I am saying is Ray is very very smart about money, but dont believe that the success is very strongly linked to the principles. I have direct and relatable experinece here. (Consulting for them). The principles are a grand ego driven experiment with no proven value. The churn rate and burnout at bwater is legendary. The survivors are interesting creatures.
Check out "An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization"
It's a fascinating profile of the pioneering organizational cultures at three companies, Bridgewater, Next Jump (a tech startup in NYC), and Decurion (a movie theater chain). Each has processes specifically intended to support the development of their employees, and the book distills the commonalities in those practices.
I like that there aren't any comments on this yet, it means that hopefully people are taking the time to read this.
I think the best way someone introduced me to Ray Dalio's principles is that it gives employee's the freedom, not to be an asshole, but to cut right to the heart of the problem without worrying about social niceties.
it's a common complaint and almost cliche on HN to hear someone say they find American culture ot be a bit "fake" where Fake refers to being polite or dancing around an issue rather than stating it clearly because they're worried about social niceties.
Principle 97 comes right out and says "Don’t let people off the hook."
and Principle 98 follows up with "Don’t assume that people’s answers are correct."
When you are free by the CEO's decree to just flat out not let someone off with a half assed answer I find that you get to the root cause of issues faster.
The downside of course is that asshole's are even more pronounced and even the most well meaning people start to sound a bit like assholes. If you have thin skin it doesn't work well, you need to learn that people aren't attacking you, but attacking the problem instead.
Not everyone transitions well to this type of environment as it can be a bit of a departure from the norm of many companies existing cultures.
it's a common complaint and almost cliche on HN to hear someone say they find American culture ot be a bit "fake" where Fake refers to being polite or dancing around an issue rather than stating it clearly because they're worried about social niceties.
Interesting, I never heard this at HN at all and here in Brazil we have the exact opposite perception: americans are very straightforward in business while we worry too much about niceties, ammenities and excessive politeness that borderlines hypocrisy. We consider this a disadvantage in our culture regarding business.
I've noticed here, in the US, that technical staff will sometimes (often?) feel attacked or challenged by simply asking the question: "Why".
It's an important information-seeking question!
But, for some reason, in many geographies, here, in the US, people often (apparently) take it to mean something like "I don't agree." or "Justify that.". And that triggers defensiveness, and then you aren't getting information.
Because my goal is the information nugget at the end of the quest, I've learned, with most people, until I know them well, to use something like these instead of "why?":
- "Interesting. Why did you decide to do it that way?", or
- "Really? How did you prioritize the trade-offs to come to that conclusion?"
I don't know if that makes Americans thin-skinned, or just sensitive to that one word, or ... what ... but I think that most Americans most of the time would prefer to not offend, and have learned that challenging another person's opinion is viewed by many to be offensive. It's highly inefficient, doesn't work well in multi-lingual meeting settings, so I'd guess the Americans you have been exposed to are are somewhat experienced in international business?
I've seen it when people describe interacting with American wait staff at restaurants or similar venues - apparently not realizing that those employees are often required to act cheerful and aggressively polite to customers or else risk being fired, or losing necessary tips.
I've skimmed over this list, and quite frankly, after a certain age, you should have learnt most of these "principles" on your own. Otherwise known as common-sense.
Be honest with yourself and others.
Self-education is a life-long commitment.
Failure to plan is planning to fail.
Think for yourself.
Think things through.
Know when to hold em, and when to fold em.
There. I think that covers probably 70% or so what he expounds on in his 210 principles.
A funny thing I find about common sense is that it isn't very common. Everything that makes up common sense makes sense when brought up or given some thought. However, having it be brought up or thought about in the first place may happen well into an individual's life.
That said, I like reading these kinds of articles because I'm still relatively young and yet to experience the full extent of life. I figure being able to collect the wisdom of those who have been around longer than I have will be quite useful.
There's a link between the process that elsewhere he mentions people need to go through to adapt there - developing a tougher skin is part of it, and that relates to learning to regulate amygdala activation - and current political questions relating to political correctness, triggering, safe spaces and the like. The research suggests that the answer to fear is incremental exposure - see treatment for arachnophobia for example - but that is not how we tend to think about it in our society today.
Yes, I think there's a balance we need to strike here. Being excessively rude and tough can demotivate employees and decrease productivity, but being too nice and polite won't get the message across.
Honesty with compassion and a genuine curiosity for how things got to be the way they are is far different from being a dick disguised as "brutal honesty". Many at bwater that are rude wash out. You are free to find the truth, not free to be a dick.
> The downside of course is that asshole's are even more pronounced and even the most well meaning people start to sound a bit like assholes.
I think I have some kind of communication issue because often when I'm asking questions about decisions, people often think I'm arguing against them. Example: My boss decides to make a policy of $x. When I ask why, I can see my boss get frustrated.
I'm legitimately asking why, because I'm curious. I'm not trying to be an ass, but I come across that way for some reason I don't understand. I wish I could figure out why, but nobody has been able to articulate to me why they think I'm arguing.
I find that you need to explicitly state your intentions ahead of time. Otherwise, people assume the worst, and get defensive right away. Then communication closes down. So my method is this: before I even ask the question, I couch it in nonthreatening terms. Usually, I start with a simple compliment. It doesn't even have to be relevant: "Hey boss, that new policy seems pretty neat. What made you implement it all of a sudden?"
I find this is effective even if you actually do want them to change their decision. Come in with a compliment, then try to lead them to recognize the flaws in the decision themselves.
One technique is to guess the reason to the best of your ability: "oh, is policy x so we can be more focused?". That way there's no possible way it can be interpreted as disagreement, just a humble clarification.
I believe that pursuing self-interest in harmony with the laws of the universe and contributing to evolution is universally rewarded, and what I call “good.” […] Like the hyenas attacking the wildebeest, successful people might not even know if or how their pursuit of self-interest helps evolution, but it typically does.
My perspective on this (and feel free to point out if there are any flaws in my thinking) is that this tendency to "work within the system of evolution" is how humans evolved. With our consciousness and self-awareness, however, we've accepted that some things that run contrary to self-interest are sometimes "good" for society. We don't have a society of absolute Darwinian natural selection; we've set up some structures to make sure that everybody can live a life where certain rights and freedoms are protected. Things like Universal Basic Income would go against the author's apparent Social Darwinistic morality, even though it might be a net positive for society.
So I'm not sure I agree with that view of "good" and "evil", though it certainly is the most practical and effective when you're managing a company.
I'm guessing you were thinking mostly about financial and political self-interest (the things we usually classify as "greed") when you wrote this post. But I think there are other, equally important ways to be selfish.
For example, humans evolved to be social creatures. Interactions with other humans impact our body chemistry in dramatic ways. I want to avoid loneliness, so I selfishly hold relationships with others. I want to hear people say "thanks" to me, so I selfishly give people gifts. I want to be able to be righteous without hypocrisy, so I selfishly stick to my principles.
Just my two cents. There are a lot of different types of desire in the world. Who's to say that UBI wouldn't be in folks' best self-interest?
I am confident that whatever success Bridgewater and I have had has resulted from our operating by certain principles.
I generally avoid this type of advice due to the inherent effects of survivorship bias. Admittedly, I haven't read all of the words yet. Am I being too rash, or does this boil down to the standard fare of a successful person's biased view and false narrative about how they have been successful?
I am, however, intrigued with the ostensibly rigorous approach of making sure the subject is defined precisely.
The fallacy with dismissing Dalio's advice as survivorship bias, is that building a successful business isn't a one-shot deal. It's not like 100 investment managers all start out with different philosophies, their cards are dealt, and years later we find that 50 have turned a profit and 5 have become super-wealthy.
Building an organisation the size of Bridgewater involves many, many sub-challenges. How do find an opening with this client? How about this other client? How do you close a deal with this client? How about this client? One client now has an issue we're not able to solve. How do you retain them? How do you build a system to manage the sales pipeline and client relations?
Who do you recruit for this position? How do you interview them? How do you track for bad hires? How do you train interviewers so you avoid future bad hires? How do you build a system to handle recruiting and HR issues?
How do you train new hires? How do you decide who to promote? How do you minimise office politics? How do you handle conflicts between managers and teams? Etc, etc, you get the idea.
Once you've faced similar issues multiple times, you can track failures and successes, and figure out the essential actions which usually lead to success in that particular field. These essential rules are principles. Over time you identify meta-principles which apply to all fields (e.g., "be rational", or "avoid wishful thinking").
I assume you didn't intend to be offensive, but your attitude boils down to "someone smart and extremely successful has taken the time to identify what they believe to be the factors behind their success, and I'm going to dismiss their opinion without reading it, because I've decided, a priori, that they must be delusional, and I regard this a-priori reasoning as the scientific and rigorous approach".
I did not intend to be offensive, only skeptical and cautious. I was pointing more to people's nature to erroneously construct narratives regarding cause and effect in their lives. We are all guilty of it, no doubt. I also don't think Dalio is being intentionally misleading. But, people tend to give less credit to chance and more credit to a very concrete chain of events that they can attribute a narrative to.
However, I think you bring up a fair criticism. It's worth reading, if nothing else, because of what Dalio has seen and experienced, situations I will likely never find myself in. As such, I would otherwise not learn firsthand how to react to or solve problems in such environments. Whether his association between actions and the outcomes are true is only part of the value of what he has written.
I think this comment is spot on. Perhaps one way to correct against this bias would be to "backtest" the principles in question on other successful investment managers (at the least)? Of course, the difficulty there is that usually you only have imperfect information about how a firm is actually run.
I agree that some sort of back test is necessary to evaluate the strength of his arguments. I am not sure what this back test would look like. Presumably some sort of case study of companies (both successful and not) that apply some or all of these principles. Data collection and validation would be a bitch. Curious if this is commonly done in academic research, possibly sociology or economics (of a behavioral flavor).
Dalio seems to assume that, since nature follows certain physical laws, those laws must be morally good. Thus he says that natural selection must be a good thing in society.
Being a proponent of natural selection, non-interference and laisser-faire is inconsistent, because who can be against protecting the innocent from injustice or healing the sick?
To give a simpler summary: nature rules by natural selection. But, once natural selection has created minds, these minds should be governed by a different set of rules: one that requires us to protect weak or marginalized people.
A related argument is this one: the laws of physics cannot, in a sense, be the source of the laws of morality. This is because the laws of physics are (by nature) inviolable -- you can never really "disobey" them. But moral laws are (by nature) able to be broken.
Edit: Aristotle disagreed with this latter argument: he thought that final causes were both causes of physical events and the source of moral rules. But this conception of physics has been (almost entirely) displaced by the modern scientific method.
I am reading through some of this, and there is some good advice.
With the caveat that I've only read a portion, I am put off by the anecdote about the Hyena and the Wildebeest. This is where he seems to be attempting to justify social Darwiniasm with actual Darwiniasm, and bizarrely projects his own conception of morality onto both.
He seems to believe that evolution is directional, and moral, which seems rather fanciful to me.
The question of trying to understand morality based on principles of Nature strikes me as pointless.
When the Hyenas kill the Wildebeest, for food, to them it is good. To the Wildebeest who was killed, it was undoubtedly bad, if anything can be called bad. To the Wildebeest who remain, perhaps in a more healthy overall environment, it might go either way.
I'm not sure what my point is here, except that my intuition is that there are some basic principles of morality, and they are not synonymous with "success." This impulse of successful people to extend methods of achieving success to be more than that is weird.
I'm going to be that guy. I skimmed a few sections and wanted to come back here and had to click the back button a dozen or so times to achieve that. Why does the URL update when you're scrolling down the page? It seems like a pointless "look what I can do!" kind of thing in JavaScript.
Firefox on Linux, I had to disable uBlockOrigin to see anything at all. It was a blank page, although ViewSource showed a large body of html and content.
This doesn't appear to be a commercial site at all. Weird that an ad blocker would be in conflict with it.
Also: I was able to read it with no problem with lynx, a text browser, after scrolling wwaaayyyy down to get to the article. Why don't designers (or whoever's responsible for this decision) put the content physically first, and the cruft last, in html? You can obviously arrange what gets displayed first in CSS/javascript. It would make life easier for text viewing people and their tools.
Websites should fail like escalators, not elevators. If your JS isn't working properly, the site should default to just dumping the text. I'll be OK dealing with the consequences of bad formatting.
Just speculating, but there might be some UX justification. If you're reading a length bulleted list, and one of the items strikes you as shareworthy, I think it actually kind of makes sense to make it easy to link to that exact bullet.
The alternative is making users share the root URL, or scroll back to a menu and click a link to get the url directly to that #anchor.
This is related to a recent story and discussion of how Dalio is trying to turn his management principles into an AI to guide the management of his hedge fund, Bridgewater:
What's interesting is that I've seen the link on HN titled "Hedge Fund Is Building an Algorithmic Model From Its Employees’ Brains", but I didn't click on it.
I found it a bit silly that the WSJ doesn't name the hedge fund in question.. It's like seeing a link on Hacker News that says "This company is redesigning its architecture", and the company is Facebook. Just say "Facebook is redesigning its architecture".
I shared the video about "How the Economic Machine Works" (narrated by Dalio) on Facebook yesterday.. Here's the video:
Readit News
Bridgewater is easily one of the most consistently performant hedge funds in history, so it's hard to argue there isn't anything at all to ways in which they're different. Capital-T-Truth is worth its weight in gold when your business is predicting the future.
My conclusion was that the system for which Principles sets the stage really does seem like a sort of Truth-utopia. I say that with no hint of irony--it really does sound like bliss to have so many unproductive communication complexities actively suppressed. If you've ever felt like work shouldn't be about navigating complex political landscapes, or other people's egos and insecurities, but instead about the team's mission, then a system built on Dalio's principles is probably up your alley.
In practice, it turns out it might be a little tricky. Understandably, there's a tremendous stigma at Bridgewater with becoming defensive when confronted with your potential 'wrongness.' It's one of the things they screen heavily for: can you receive aggressive critique of your argument, often bordering on personal attack, without feeling threatened or defensive--ie, while still maintaining a relentless pursuit of Truth?
Problems start (again, as I understand it second-hand) at the point where people use Truth-seeking methodology like a cudgel. Consider a simple example, not significantly altered from a friend's first-hand experience:
You: "I think we ought to do X, because of [etc etc]"
Colleague: "What? It feels like you're not even considering Y. I think what we're seeing is that you're consistently refusing to get your head out of your ass and see [etc etc]. You have a bias that leads you towards X, and it's making you useless to this project."
You: "I understand your argument and I think it's fair to think I have that bias. However, I've thought a lot about that particular bias, and I've concluded that it isn't a bias because of [etc etc]. So I think the premise of your objection is flawed."
In this example, were 'You' responding to the merits of the argument presented, or were you being defensive? How do you know? How do you disagree with arguments couched in critiques of your objectiveness, self-awareness, etc?
The conclusion I ultimately settled on was that so-called 'social niceties' don't just serve as kid-gloves for fragile egos. They're also a reliable mechanism of giving people the space to engage in honest discussions about their own short-comings as they relate to the argument.
Because the Colleague in this example had been conditioned to understand that more aggressive arguments can functionally shut-out a dissenting opinion (because, again, of the stigma around defensiveness), I'd argue he/she had incentive to act aggressively.
In some respects, the Colleague in this example has failed to check their own emotions (irritation, frustration, etc.)--a slip-up that isn't nearly as vilified as failing to control emotions when confronted. This sort of asymmetry, I think, is one of the bigger risks in this type of system.
Like I said at the top, though, I ultimately did apply. My reasoning was simple: every work culture has its baggage (I'd come from investment banking), and I felt this baggage was more manageable than most other types I was familiar with.
Now that I'm building my own company, I've been re-reading Dalio's stuff. I really respect what Bridgewater is trying to do culturally, and I'm anxious to see if parts of it are transferable to a more tech-oriented workplace (and one where the average worker doesn't gross $200k+, fwiw).
https://hbr.org/product/an-everyone-culture-becoming-a-delib...
Going to give this a read now.
[0]: self-criticism, "Truth-upia", "a little tricky"
Deleted Comment
I think the best way someone introduced me to Ray Dalio's principles is that it gives employee's the freedom, not to be an asshole, but to cut right to the heart of the problem without worrying about social niceties.
it's a common complaint and almost cliche on HN to hear someone say they find American culture ot be a bit "fake" where Fake refers to being polite or dancing around an issue rather than stating it clearly because they're worried about social niceties.
Principle 97 comes right out and says "Don’t let people off the hook."
and Principle 98 follows up with "Don’t assume that people’s answers are correct."
When you are free by the CEO's decree to just flat out not let someone off with a half assed answer I find that you get to the root cause of issues faster.
The downside of course is that asshole's are even more pronounced and even the most well meaning people start to sound a bit like assholes. If you have thin skin it doesn't work well, you need to learn that people aren't attacking you, but attacking the problem instead.
Not everyone transitions well to this type of environment as it can be a bit of a departure from the norm of many companies existing cultures.
Interesting, I never heard this at HN at all and here in Brazil we have the exact opposite perception: americans are very straightforward in business while we worry too much about niceties, ammenities and excessive politeness that borderlines hypocrisy. We consider this a disadvantage in our culture regarding business.
It's an important information-seeking question!
But, for some reason, in many geographies, here, in the US, people often (apparently) take it to mean something like "I don't agree." or "Justify that.". And that triggers defensiveness, and then you aren't getting information.
Because my goal is the information nugget at the end of the quest, I've learned, with most people, until I know them well, to use something like these instead of "why?":
I don't know if that makes Americans thin-skinned, or just sensitive to that one word, or ... what ... but I think that most Americans most of the time would prefer to not offend, and have learned that challenging another person's opinion is viewed by many to be offensive. It's highly inefficient, doesn't work well in multi-lingual meeting settings, so I'd guess the Americans you have been exposed to are are somewhat experienced in international business?Be honest with yourself and others. Self-education is a life-long commitment. Failure to plan is planning to fail. Think for yourself. Think things through. Know when to hold em, and when to fold em.
There. I think that covers probably 70% or so what he expounds on in his 210 principles.
That said, I like reading these kinds of articles because I'm still relatively young and yet to experience the full extent of life. I figure being able to collect the wisdom of those who have been around longer than I have will be quite useful.
Eg How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus - The Atlantic https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http:...
Excessively tough-minded bluntness is frowned upon for good reason.
I think I have some kind of communication issue because often when I'm asking questions about decisions, people often think I'm arguing against them. Example: My boss decides to make a policy of $x. When I ask why, I can see my boss get frustrated.
I'm legitimately asking why, because I'm curious. I'm not trying to be an ass, but I come across that way for some reason I don't understand. I wish I could figure out why, but nobody has been able to articulate to me why they think I'm arguing.
I find this is effective even if you actually do want them to change their decision. Come in with a compliment, then try to lead them to recognize the flaws in the decision themselves.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
My perspective on this (and feel free to point out if there are any flaws in my thinking) is that this tendency to "work within the system of evolution" is how humans evolved. With our consciousness and self-awareness, however, we've accepted that some things that run contrary to self-interest are sometimes "good" for society. We don't have a society of absolute Darwinian natural selection; we've set up some structures to make sure that everybody can live a life where certain rights and freedoms are protected. Things like Universal Basic Income would go against the author's apparent Social Darwinistic morality, even though it might be a net positive for society.
So I'm not sure I agree with that view of "good" and "evil", though it certainly is the most practical and effective when you're managing a company.
For example, humans evolved to be social creatures. Interactions with other humans impact our body chemistry in dramatic ways. I want to avoid loneliness, so I selfishly hold relationships with others. I want to hear people say "thanks" to me, so I selfishly give people gifts. I want to be able to be righteous without hypocrisy, so I selfishly stick to my principles.
Just my two cents. There are a lot of different types of desire in the world. Who's to say that UBI wouldn't be in folks' best self-interest?
I generally avoid this type of advice due to the inherent effects of survivorship bias. Admittedly, I haven't read all of the words yet. Am I being too rash, or does this boil down to the standard fare of a successful person's biased view and false narrative about how they have been successful?
I am, however, intrigued with the ostensibly rigorous approach of making sure the subject is defined precisely.
Building an organisation the size of Bridgewater involves many, many sub-challenges. How do find an opening with this client? How about this other client? How do you close a deal with this client? How about this client? One client now has an issue we're not able to solve. How do you retain them? How do you build a system to manage the sales pipeline and client relations?
Who do you recruit for this position? How do you interview them? How do you track for bad hires? How do you train interviewers so you avoid future bad hires? How do you build a system to handle recruiting and HR issues?
How do you train new hires? How do you decide who to promote? How do you minimise office politics? How do you handle conflicts between managers and teams? Etc, etc, you get the idea.
Once you've faced similar issues multiple times, you can track failures and successes, and figure out the essential actions which usually lead to success in that particular field. These essential rules are principles. Over time you identify meta-principles which apply to all fields (e.g., "be rational", or "avoid wishful thinking").
I assume you didn't intend to be offensive, but your attitude boils down to "someone smart and extremely successful has taken the time to identify what they believe to be the factors behind their success, and I'm going to dismiss their opinion without reading it, because I've decided, a priori, that they must be delusional, and I regard this a-priori reasoning as the scientific and rigorous approach".
However, I think you bring up a fair criticism. It's worth reading, if nothing else, because of what Dalio has seen and experienced, situations I will likely never find myself in. As such, I would otherwise not learn firsthand how to react to or solve problems in such environments. Whether his association between actions and the outcomes are true is only part of the value of what he has written.
I think the best counterargument comes from Lester Frank Ward, writing about Social Darwinism: http://www.nlnrac.org/critics/social-darwinism/documents/min...
Being a proponent of natural selection, non-interference and laisser-faire is inconsistent, because who can be against protecting the innocent from injustice or healing the sick?
A related argument is this one: the laws of physics cannot, in a sense, be the source of the laws of morality. This is because the laws of physics are (by nature) inviolable -- you can never really "disobey" them. But moral laws are (by nature) able to be broken.
Edit: Aristotle disagreed with this latter argument: he thought that final causes were both causes of physical events and the source of moral rules. But this conception of physics has been (almost entirely) displaced by the modern scientific method.
With the caveat that I've only read a portion, I am put off by the anecdote about the Hyena and the Wildebeest. This is where he seems to be attempting to justify social Darwiniasm with actual Darwiniasm, and bizarrely projects his own conception of morality onto both.
He seems to believe that evolution is directional, and moral, which seems rather fanciful to me.
The question of trying to understand morality based on principles of Nature strikes me as pointless.
When the Hyenas kill the Wildebeest, for food, to them it is good. To the Wildebeest who was killed, it was undoubtedly bad, if anything can be called bad. To the Wildebeest who remain, perhaps in a more healthy overall environment, it might go either way.
I'm not sure what my point is here, except that my intuition is that there are some basic principles of morality, and they are not synonymous with "success." This impulse of successful people to extend methods of achieving success to be more than that is weird.
This doesn't appear to be a commercial site at all. Weird that an ad blocker would be in conflict with it.
Also: I was able to read it with no problem with lynx, a text browser, after scrolling wwaaayyyy down to get to the article. Why don't designers (or whoever's responsible for this decision) put the content physically first, and the cruft last, in html? You can obviously arrange what gets displayed first in CSS/javascript. It would make life easier for text viewing people and their tools.
/rant
The alternative is making users share the root URL, or scroll back to a menu and click a link to get the url directly to that #anchor.
They could use `replaceState`[1] instead of `pushState` though so as not to mess with your browser history.
[1]https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API...
Deleted Comment
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13238568
I found it a bit silly that the WSJ doesn't name the hedge fund in question.. It's like seeing a link on Hacker News that says "This company is redesigning its architecture", and the company is Facebook. Just say "Facebook is redesigning its architecture".
I shared the video about "How the Economic Machine Works" (narrated by Dalio) on Facebook yesterday.. Here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0