"I mean, my lord Salvara, that your own expectations have been used against you. You have a keen sense for men of business, surely. You've grown your family fortune several times over in your brief time handling it. Therefore, a man who wished to snare you in some scheme could do nothing wiser than to act the consummate man of business. To deliberately manifest all your expectations. To show you exactly what you expected and desired to see."

"It seems to me that if I accept your argument," the don said slowly, "then the self-evident truth of any legitimate thing could be taken as grounds for its falseness. I say Lukas Fehrwight is a merchant of Emberlain because he shows the signs of being so; you say those same signs are what prove him counterfeit. I need more sensible evidence than this."

-- Scott Lynch, "The Lies of Locke Lamora", page 150.

What type of cardio should you do? Cardio that is amenable to high intensity is probably one of: running (especially up hills), swimming, rowing, biking, burpees, or jump rope.

I enjoyed swimming when I was younger and logistics this summer will allow me to do that easily. So a cardio swimming routine would have me swimming lightly for a couple of minutes, swimming intensively in intervals and then swimming lightly for a couple of minutes to cooldown.

What swimming style or is it irrelevant? Keep the same swimming style or switch for the different phases?

Great post!

It looks to me like the weight training basically requires you to go to a gym. Is there an alternative for people who can't easily do that, and how does it compare?

(I've been using resistance bands almost every day for a few months, in a "do X many stretches, gradually increasing X" capacity. Presumably there's something better I can do with them, but total time is only about two minutes, which I like.)

You pay $490 and get what exactly? Afaikt the business model is, pay $490 to get exactly the same level of treatment as someone who does not pay a cent but with a piece of paper you can print out confirming you are not a liar?... If it offered credit, that would be one thing, but the fact that is doesn't is quite telling .(I guess it is impressive that coursera has found a way to print out "certificates" with the John Hopkins logo on even though no-one from John Hopkins will ever see or interact with any of the students though) You don't get any feedback or assessment, you just get some added signalling value. Still - the courses look interesting if pretty basic.

"Given all of this, I think that if you're smart and hard working, you should have *at least an 80-90% chance at succeeding at a startup."*

Your method is bad- you have come up with some imaginary numbers and not addressed the obvious difference with reality, except with the qualifier that you mean people who are "smart & hardworking".

Surprisingly, when I went looking, you might be partially correct: at least for people who really are smart and hardworking and for certain values of "success". To look at the Ycombinator list - the number of "failures" or dead companies is very low and this probably provides a decent filter in that they are as experienced as anyone in identifying people who are smart and hardworking in the ways relevant for a startup.

The huge caveat is of course that nearly all startups don't get funded by ycombinator and "not dead yet" is not comparable to "success".

Making up imaginary numbers and then coming up with a rationalisation for those numbers is still a horrible way of making an argument though. Worse, you haven't explained why your made-up number is so different from the commonly quoted made up number that 90% of startups fail.

Fiction Books Thread

In CFAR, MIRI have the ultimate hedge. If the whole MIRI mission is misdirected or wrong headed, CFAR is designed to create the people who will notice that and do whatever does most need to be done.

Which particular things did you find irritating?

I recently read the sequences at a fairly rapid pace using the ebooks versions available on my ipad and there were certainly a few common things I found intensely irritating. I definitely found some of the sequences interesting enough to read again more closely. Which of the sequences are included in the ebook?

OK, fine. But that wasn't a real chapter.