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Dignity and Other Obstacles to Success
In my recent post on physician-assisted death, in which I ran the debate through the so-called Rationality Engine, some of you were disappointed that my verdict was not a verdict. My summary was that a person who values human dignity above freedom could rationally be opposed to physician-assisted death, and vice-versa.
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Meanwhile, at Top Tech Blog, some youngsters figured out how to solve the world’s energy problems with salt. It sounds ridiculous because I left out the part that they are MIT students. So yeah, it probably works. (Dilbert’s cartoon degree is from MIT.)
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0 CommentsThe Lonely Geek Advantage
A few months ago my brother was in town and we spent much of our time tinkering with a new lighting system for my garage man-cave, tracking down some Ethernet wiring problems, learning how to edit video, connecting an old computer to an old television to display my website analytics, and a few other projects.
Geeky stuff.
How much did we enjoy it? A lot. My brother’s visit was the highlight of my month. Everything we worked on had a functional purpose, but the reason we allocated our leisure time to it is because it was fun.
As a result of tinkering on stuff with my brother, I learned a boatload of new and useful things. Some of those things will be directly useful to my job in the future and others will form patterns that will be indirectly useful. Every time you learn a new thing it creates a template for more easily understanding future new things. So I came out way ahead.
Now to my point.
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As most of you know, several years ago I lost my ability to speak due to a rare voice problem called Spasmodic Dysphonia. My doctor and the specialists that he recommended were baffled. No one knew what was causing it. And until you have a name for your problem, it is nearly impossible to find a solution.
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A typical start-up created by an inexperienced entrepreneur has about a 10% chance of success.
But if that same entrepreneur pivots, or starts a second company, the odds of the next venture succeeding jumps to about 20%. And that makes sense because you learn a lot during your first failure, and you make a lot of contacts that can be useful later.
If you go up the odds chain, an angel investor with twenty investments in different companies might have a 70% chance of doing well because of the value of diversification.
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In Berkeley start-up news, this guy might have found a way to turn his toe fungus into a billion-dollar business. If you have toe fungus too, and all you did about it was wear socks with your sandals, you are officially an underachiever. (This is not an investment recommendation.)
In Top Tech news, how about wings for humans, powered by jets? Already here. What could go wrong?
And do you like your robots all metallic and cold, or soft to the touch and oh-so-creepy? Technology has you covered, and the robots too.
How long before the vision-impaired have magic wands instead of canes? We’re getting there. And where the hell are the self-driving Segways so no canes are needed?
0 CommentsDeath with Dignity - Verdict
[Update 5/18/15: I have begun evaluating the top-rated comments for consideration as upgrades to the living debate. When I think I have a good set of objections/upgrades I will issue a new (or confirmed) verdict.]
In prior posts, Jimmy Akin provided the seed argument against physician-assisted death that I will pass through what I call the Rationality Engine.
If you have been following the Rationality Engine (performed on two other topics so far) you know this is the verdict phase. I will give you my judgment on the “claims” made in this debate followed by a summary verdict at the end.
(This is crazy long. There was no way to shorten it.)
This is a living debate, by design. All verdicts are preliminary and subject to change with new data or better thinking.
I start by reiterating the known bias in the participants (a repeat) followed by my verdicts.
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