I agree, it's a weird argument! However, if the points you paraphrased are supposed to be the premises, I'm not sure why they're inherently false. Maybe I don't provide ample research behind them. But are they obviously false?
1. Did an explosion of literacy due to the printing press lead to an interest in free speech? Makes sense.
2. Does endless debate / political gridlock lead to an inability to build in San Francisco? Every attempt to provide housing becomes a vicious argument between NIMBYs and YIMBYs. I also have personal experience working both sides of local development issues in Austin, and the challenges are similar to the ones in SF. As you're trying to go about your business in city council, someone will stop the conversation with some objection to an act or policy that would make everybody's lives better except for that one person (so they think), and then nothing gets done, or it requires expensive lobbyists to push through.
3. I don't have an objective backing of my city ranking, but I've socialized this high-density / high-functioning metric for some time now, and anybody who has traveled has agreed with my assessment with Asian cities. Note, two cities I mentioned are not in China: Tokyo and Singapore. I also forgot to mention Taipei, but that belongs on the list too.
4. I don't think free speech will doom the West. And that is not a premise anyways.
However, if there is a takeaway, my hope is that the West takes a deep look at itself as to what works and what doesn't work with its culture, and try to evolve without losing its soul. Barring that, then accept that as Asian cities evolve and support greater populations, the U.S. will be relegated to a minor player role, similar to the U.K. today. I just hope I don't grow old and discover that my beloved America is having its own petulant version of Brexit.
I feel the same way about karaoke. Do a little bit of practice so you don't look like a fool. But, if you over-practice you'll take the fun out of having your best performance live.
I feel like karoake has a bathtub distribution. My favorites are the people who are outrageously good or outrageously bad. As long as they are outliers, it's fun. The ones in the middle who sing well enough to not embarrass themselves but not good enough to be an exciting performance are boring.
Humm, if you get everything right I would probably assume you already read about something similar which means that it is evaluating nothing or rather it is just evaluating your ability to remember things which is not that useful when you can just google it.
Pro tip for non-singers like me: Buy one of those karaoke games. Now find out the songs your voice naturally sings reasonably well. Stick to those songs forevermore.
This is revised and updated from my original post 2 years ago on Hacker News:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4629317
I've now compiled this into a book of 82 letters showing every self-help method I tried.
I've now compiled this into a book of 82 letters showing my progression from ages 14 through 30. I started with classic self-help books like Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People (great book) and Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (not-so-great), but eventually got into what I believe is the ultimate self-improvement: meditation.
I'm always looking to create some new niche site for passive income. I've tried various site worth estimation services to see how much existing ideas are earn, but it's really hard to trust the numbers. Many of them are opaque about their methodology. But what if we aggregated their results (a la Nate Silver)? I created MetaSiteworth to do just that, and the results give you a ballpark idea about what kind of sites make what kind of money:
1. Did an explosion of literacy due to the printing press lead to an interest in free speech? Makes sense.
2. Does endless debate / political gridlock lead to an inability to build in San Francisco? Every attempt to provide housing becomes a vicious argument between NIMBYs and YIMBYs. I also have personal experience working both sides of local development issues in Austin, and the challenges are similar to the ones in SF. As you're trying to go about your business in city council, someone will stop the conversation with some objection to an act or policy that would make everybody's lives better except for that one person (so they think), and then nothing gets done, or it requires expensive lobbyists to push through.
3. I don't have an objective backing of my city ranking, but I've socialized this high-density / high-functioning metric for some time now, and anybody who has traveled has agreed with my assessment with Asian cities. Note, two cities I mentioned are not in China: Tokyo and Singapore. I also forgot to mention Taipei, but that belongs on the list too.
4. I don't think free speech will doom the West. And that is not a premise anyways.
However, if there is a takeaway, my hope is that the West takes a deep look at itself as to what works and what doesn't work with its culture, and try to evolve without losing its soul. Barring that, then accept that as Asian cities evolve and support greater populations, the U.S. will be relegated to a minor player role, similar to the U.K. today. I just hope I don't grow old and discover that my beloved America is having its own petulant version of Brexit.