EPThttp://www.teamliquid.net/forum/general/409215-fountain-pens
Ask and answer stupid questions here! - Page 537
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RvB
Netherlands6274 Posts
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/general/409215-fountain-pens | ||
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Thouhastmail
Korea (North)876 Posts
On December 07 2016 22:47 RvB wrote: There's a thread for fountain pens. Maybe more useful to ask it there instead of in this thread. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/general/409215-fountain-pens Ta! | ||
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opisska
Poland8852 Posts
On December 07 2016 22:47 RvB wrote: There's a thread for fountain pens. Maybe more useful to ask it there instead of in this thread. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/general/409215-fountain-pens One of the greatest achievements of TL - keeping this thread mostly sane in the community of ... people. | ||
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ThomasjServo
15244 Posts
On December 07 2016 22:53 opisska wrote: One of the greatest achievements of TL - keeping this thread mostly sane in the community of ... people. Part of me was surprised that it existed, then I realized I really shouldn't be surprised that thread is on TL. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
My brother is a person with more money than sense, he's a hard working person so he makes a fair bit of money but he's a profoundly gullible and manipulable person. He believes in any conspiracy theory presented to him, and when he bought his Jetta he went to the dealership with a budget of $20k and ended up with a car worth significantly more than that. Long story short, (this is what he tells me, I don't know how true any of this is) -- he has been hanging out with these people who've been bumming around their whole lives, the father of one of the guys is a very rich, multi-millionaire lawyer/investor and from what he tells me, a hedge fund manager or something like that. They've apparently spent $30k developing a phone application, with a reasonably workable concept that I haven't found to necessarily be a bad idea, but it's definitely a tough sell in a competitive market, as all apps are. No one in their right mind would assume an app to be a slam dunk. Anyhow, they've offered him a 1% equity for $5000. Since the guy would absolutely not be receptive to outright "no it's a bad idea", I try to be very diplomatic, because the second I firmly tell him he's being swindled he'll assume my advice is bad and he'll be tempted to go against it and against me. How do I diplomatically tell him that if it's not a scam, it's a wild gamble? Any other arguments I could bring up? He tells me that he completely trusts the guys who've made him this offer. Also this $30000 startup says they're associated with Paypal already which seems to be a wildly dubious claim. There's a small, tiny chance that this thing would take off. I don't think it's going to happen, and $5000 is money he actually can afford to lose but it wouldn't feel good. I'm a bit worried that he'll give 5k to a bunch of random dudes who'll waste it developing an app that'll almost certainly go no where, even though they've apparently been pouring their hearts and souls into it. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On December 09 2016 13:11 JimmiC wrote: Just talk to him like they do on Shark tank, and how investors think. 5000 1% values the company at 500,000$ with no sales and a idea 30,000 in they are worth no where near that. MAYBE they are worth 60,000 but likely with 0 sales they are worth less then they spent developing it. For exact wording watching a shark tank episode wouldn't be a bad idea as some one usually has a crazy valuation like this and they have to lay down the law. I should watch this I guess, I have ridiculously rudimentary understanding of even basic terminology in that domain. | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
I don't think you need to convince him that it is very unlikely for it to take off, you only need to convince him that it is a very plausible possibility. Come up with some scenarios where this will fall flat due to reasons completely outside of the creators control. Then you avoid telling him that the developers can make mistakes, which should go along better. Tell him that there are a lot of ways things can just fail. Maybe a bigger company is developing something very similar right now, which can be marketed at a completely different scale. Maybe some other product will come out in 6 months making this project irrelevant. Then, ask him if he is fine with taking the shot, things failing and him losing his $5k. Would that be completely ok for him? If he says that he indeed doesn't mind too much losing the $5k, then I don't think you should try to stop him. Let him act on his call, even if you think it's stupid. None of you are experts in this as I understand, so I don't think you are in a position to push this call too confidently either TBH. Indeed, let me ask you this: would you be ok with forcefully talking him into not investing, and then the company actually taking of and going into millions of $:s? | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
He tells me there's a 30-page business plan that exists but he hasn't seen, and that this other guy has been extended the possibility to get 1% for $3700 instead of $5000 which he may get too. He says he wants to see "statistic" by which he means market studies and general research, which I doubt is very elaborate. Either way he lacks the capabilities to read it, so if he gets his hands on that I'll read the business plan and see if it looks like they're at least serious. And, even if all that checks out, we're still in la-la land. A lot of "successful" tech startups reach prominence and fail to turn a profit because of bad management, a lot of them never take off despite being good because of bad marketing or being beat to market dominance. Plus there's the old slippery slope - put in another $2000 so we can afford to patch it, it's going to take off next year. I've seen Silicon Valley, this shit is cutthroat. In the words of Picard, "it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose". There are so many points of failure. | ||
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Deleuze
United Kingdom2102 Posts
On December 09 2016 14:51 Cascade wrote: Not sure if the shark-tank approach will bite. From the description of your brother he probably doesn't think about it like a calculated investment. He trusts these guys, and it'll most likely take off! They've worked so hard! I don't think you need to convince him that it is very unlikely for it to take off, you only need to convince him that it is a very plausible possibility. Come up with some scenarios where this will fall flat due to reasons completely outside of the creators control. Then you avoid telling him that the developers can make mistakes, which should go along better. Tell him that there are a lot of ways things can just fail. Maybe a bigger company is developing something very similar right now, which can be marketed at a completely different scale. Maybe some other product will come out in 6 months making this project irrelevant. Then, ask him if he is fine with taking the shot, things failing and him losing his $5k. Would that be completely ok for him? If he says that he indeed doesn't mind too much losing the $5k, then I don't think you should try to stop him. Let him act on his call, even if you think it's stupid. None of you are experts in this as I understand, so I don't think you are in a position to push this call too confidently either TBH. Indeed, let me ask you this: would you be ok with forcefully talking him into not investing, and then the company actually taking of and going into millions of $:s? Leading on from this, I'd suggest that you treat the risk as, not losing money (he has more money that sense as you say), but as a risk of this damaging his friendships - which he probably values quite a bit. Simply ask him: "So what happens if the business completely fails and you lose your money, will you be pissed off at your friends? Will it damage your relationship with them?" If you giving advice is an insta-red flag to him, then give him someone else's "never do business with friends" anecdote - I am sure you'll find some business guru's advice to that effect with a quick Google. Also, get him to think about what happens if they keep on asking for money. Ask open questions for him to answer, pose some scenarios he could think about - that way, he's giving himself advice, not you. Personally, loss of friendship is at risk here, not cash. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On December 10 2016 00:53 Deleuze wrote: Leading on from this, I'd suggest that you treat the risk as, not losing money (he has more money that sense as you say), but as a risk of this damaging his friendships - which he probably values quite a bit. Simply ask him: "So what happens if the business completely fails and you lose your money, will you be pissed off at your friends? Will it damage your relationship with them?" If you giving advice is an insta-red flag to him, then give him someone else's "never do business with friends" anecdote - I am sure you'll find some business guru's advice to that effect with a quick Google. Also, get him to think about what happens if they keep on asking for money. Ask open questions for him to answer, pose some scenarios he could think about - that way, he's giving himself advice, not you. Personally, loss of friendship is at risk here, not cash. Well he's not rich by any means but he does have $5k he could lose without going bankrupt. But yeah I'll try that approach next time we talk about it. I want to plant as many seeds of doubt in his mind as I can, and if he decided to go through with it I'll have done my job and he'll learn his lesson... Or I'll learn mine and he'll get rich af. Probably not though. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23957 Posts
Our political situation, our technology itself, or the philosophical implications of the newest tech (cloning for example)/quantum mechanics theories? | ||
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Simberto
Germany11839 Posts
Step one would be "Oh my god cars! Airplanes! Skyscrapers!" I have no idea how long that phase would last. Probably a pretty long while. I am not even sure if even someone really smart like Socrates would be able to cope with the change of situation. Society has changed so much that they have to relearn basically everything from scratch. Every single aspect of modern life just involves so many small things that are obvious to you because you grew up with them, but need to be learned anew by someone from BC. Imagine how much shit you need to figure out for stuff to start making any sense whatsoever. And your process of figuring stuff out also doesn't work very well anymore. Especially if you grab someone at a later period in their lives, i assume this to be incredibly problematic. At some point, there is probably also the "Lol you think we did stuff THAT way???" period, where they look at the way their time is portrayed by historians and laugh about it. After a long period of acclimatisation, i would assume that a person of learning would eventually just start living in a library. Books are a way of gaining knowledge that is pretty unchanged for ages. And there are a lot of books nowadays. | ||
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Thouhastmail
Korea (North)876 Posts
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Acrofales
Spain18292 Posts
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xM(Z
Romania5299 Posts
On December 10 2016 10:40 Simberto wrote: that is pretty sad. would you be like "oh my god, flying cars!" when in a future who has them?. It would probably be a progression. Step one would be "Oh my god cars! Airplanes! Skyscrapers!" I have no idea how long that phase would last. Probably a pretty long while. I am not even sure if even someone really smart like Socrates would be able to cope with the change of situation. Society has changed so much that they have to relearn basically everything from scratch. Every single aspect of modern life just involves so many small things that are obvious to you because you grew up with them, but need to be learned anew by someone from BC. Imagine how much shit you need to figure out for stuff to start making any sense whatsoever. And your process of figuring stuff out also doesn't work very well anymore. Especially if you grab someone at a later period in their lives, i assume this to be incredibly problematic. At some point, there is probably also the "Lol you think we did stuff THAT way???" period, where they look at the way their time is portrayed by historians and laugh about it. After a long period of acclimatisation, i would assume that a person of learning would eventually just start living in a library. Books are a way of gaining knowledge that is pretty unchanged for ages. And there are a lot of books nowadays. one does not get amazed by fancier looking wagons, taller villas, or flying metal birds.  he will check out the ladies, our social structure, then look for proofs on whether or not his early theories were right; he will probably commit suicide after. (all that, if and only if, you manage to convince him that vaccines are good for him and get him out of the quarantine) | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On December 10 2016 16:56 xM(Z wrote: that is pretty sad. would you be like "oh my god, flying cars!" when in a future who has them?. one does not get amazed by fancier looking wagons, taller villas, or flying metal birds. he will check out the ladies, our social structure, then look for proofs on whether or not his early theories were right; he will probably commit suicide after. (all that, if and only if, you manage to convince him that vaccines are good for him and get him out of the quarantine) I think the reaction depends on personality more than anything here. Yes, he did some research in his time, but that is entirely out of date and won't help him in processing what he sees. After a short acclimatization period, I think the main difference for him would be how everyone back then looked up to him, and he was an authority on everything he said, but here it'd be the other way around. From that perspective, he'd probably end up teaching how things were back then to historians, as that is the only valuable information he has, and he can remain in a role of intellectual authority. I mean, he'd have a period of processing everything new, trying to catch up and so on. But after a year or two maybe, I think he'd be back in his role of professor with students around him, teaching history to history researchers. Reference: futurama. Delivery boy in 2000 = delivery boy in 3000. Oh, and on a tangent. The only thing in today's technology that keeps amazing me is seeing the giant fucking piece of metal that an airbus is just casually lift off the runway at the airports. I'm perfectly fine with near-instant worldwide communication and collected human knowledge being available in my pocket. No problems. But those commercial airliners lifting off the ground... I can't get my brain to accept it as normal. So if it were me to guide him, one of the first things I'd do is to have him take a flight, and give him plenty of time to sit at the gates and look at the flights take of and land.  | ||
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Deleuze
United Kingdom2102 Posts
On December 10 2016 16:41 Acrofales wrote: Socrates would take one look at shopping malls and McDonalds and ask to be killed again I think he'd end up going on a rampage with Genghis Khan, Bill the Kid, Abraham Lincoln and Sigmund Freud personally. | ||
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