Alec Baldwin's speech was designed to serve the point of the MOVIE, not to actually do the job he was told to do (motivate the douchey salemen).

Instead of motivating him, it insulted him. While he deserved it, it doesn't change the fact that the speech was proof that Alec himself COULD NOT DO HIS JOB.

A good douchebag motivator would not have told Jack Lemon that he was a failure and deserved nothing more. Instead he would have found a way to motivate them to sell more, rather than to make the point of the movie.

But I do believe my alternative advice does help at least a little bit. Among other things, the advice to talk to women you don't want to date may end up introducing you to someone that, while not preferable, after you get to know her you may decided she is acceptable.

As an atheist who also happens to believe we are in fact living in a simulation, let me be the first reply to say - that is an excellent point!

The mind that created the universe simulation would perfectly fit the literal definition of God, and I suppose in that sense I'm not truly an atheist either, since such a mind would be a strong likelihood given the assumptions we are already making are true.

But then thinking a moment and recalling what we currently know of our observable universe, with all of the matter and energy out there that must be kept track of in such a simulation, it's fair to also think that us teeny tiny human energy structures are /nothing/ compared to that, and barely nothing in the grand scheme.

Any such mind that is able to simulate all of this wouldn't have any reason to care about me personally, any more than you care about the fate of a single specific atom in your body.
There would be no reason to lay praise or prayer upon such a mind, nor any reason to expect any special treatment over any other equally small structure that is another human.

That still tells me that even if I am factually wrong about the existence of such a God, my behavior and actions in this life so far are still perfectly aligned with how I have behaved and acted. No harm done :}

Your method is designed to let an unethical criminal who happens to spend a lot of money to create a HFT trading platform get to create a new kind of order that has the advantages of both a market order AND a limit order. He is NOT entitled to that liquidity. He traded it away in order to get the better price.

And that advantage is ONLY available to wealthy unethical criminals that have access to HFT. (note I am not saying that all HFT are unethical criminals, just that some of them are.).

What I am saying is that if you want the liquidity fine, you have to pay the price of liquidity - a lack of control over price. If you want control over price, you have

Markets are by law AND by theory supposed to be fair. It is not ethical, nor right to let the wealthy people and ONLY the wealthy people get a certain kind of special order type that grants both liquidity and also guaranteed price.

In my example if the guy is not willing to offer 500,000 shares total at that price, then he doesn't have to. It was perfectly legal for him to offer 20,000 shares at 35.2 on 5 different markets.

I am not taking advantage of the HFT - he is taking advantage of me. He SOLD his liquidity to get the slightly better price, he is NOT allowed to sneakily steal that liquidity back after he sold it.

I bought liquidity that he offered for sale. that is MY profit, not his to steal back.

If it takes an hour to recharge a battery, you can stop for lunch, recharge, travel till dinner, then stop again, travel on to your motel, then sleep for the night. Repeat.

If it takes four hours, then you ride in the morning, run out of power, stop for half the day, eat lunch, then are forced to wait 3 hour while you finish recharging. Then , travel on, stop for dinner the night. In effect, each day you travel 2/3 of the distance as compared to a one hour recharge.

As for short trips, it means that if you run out of power, a mere 15 minute partial recharge should be enough to get you back home where you can complete the full recharge. Compare this with a oh crap, I need to wait an hour at the seven-eleven to get enough of a partial recharge to get home.

Prime example is 'be yourself'. Most people who are still dating don't know who they are. Saying be yourself is not in any way helpful. The proper way to word that bit of advice is do not try to be something you are not. The advice is at hear the same, but the second way is fundamentally better advice because it is far more likely to be understood and used.

Another example from the dating world is "Be confident". That is about the worst possible advice possible, because 1) confidence, like height, weight, your bank account, etc. is something not under your direct, immediate control. You can't decided to be confident anymore than you can decide to be tall, thin, or wealthy. Yes, with years of hard work, you can become those things (tall requires HGH injections before your bones close - but it still takes years of work). and also 2) Most women are incredibly bad at detecting confidence, often mistaking disinterest, a slight alcohol buzz, practiced smoothness, ignorance or mere blind chance for confidence. Here, the proper advice is not to 'be confident', but instead practice with girls you don't want to date before you ask the girl you want to date out. That method helps a lot with the behaviors that women mistake for a lack of confidence.

It reminds me of the "coffee is for closers" scene in Glengary, Glen Ross.

There you have Alec Baldwin, yelling and insulting salesmen, telling them they are crap and they should only get paid for results. That companies hire people to do things, not to 'try' and fail, and they should get no 'good' leads' and no coffee because they are incompetent closers.

The problem is he himself is NOT doing a job. Alec Baldwin - despite his claim to be rich and successful - may or may not be telling the truth, but his obnoxious, insulting manner is designed to drive a point home to the movie viewers, NOT to actually do the job he was supposed to be doing - getting the salesmen to be better at their job.

Because both salesmen and motivational speakers (Alec's current job) 'catch more flies with honey'. Being nice AFFECTS how well you sell, and how well you motivate.

The media is the message, and his media sucked.

By putting in a delay of 500 ms, you prevent this kind of behavior.

Why is that behavior bad? Because for high volume traders they have to split a single order over multiple markets - mainly because others are ALSO splitting among multiple markets.

That is, say I have 500,000 shares to sell. Currently 5 different markets all show a price of 35.2, at 100,000 shares being offered

Moreover, all 5 markets offers are from you, as you are the main guy buying right now.

It is NOT fair for you to take 100,000 of my order at 35.2, then instantly cancel your four other 100,000 orders and replace them at 35.4

You offered to buy all 500,000 at 35.2, not just that 100,000 and should not be allowed to cheat me by raising your price for the remaining 400,000.

A delay of 500 ms means you can't see that your first order is executed until after all your other orders are ALSO executed.

This is one simple example of how HFT try to unethically game the system.

If your opponent must throw rock 50% of the time, then you throw paper 100% of the time.

You will win AT LEAST 51% of the time, because you get the 50% gifted to you, and the other non-0% of the times that your opponent throws paper will cause a rematch.

2) It assumes that transportation will take 100's of years. Within 100 years, our space technology should be able to deliver 10 people 4 light years away (one way trip), in no more than 50 years travel time. That is two generations.

3) There is no reason to select people 'randomly', we can easily intentionally select people non-randomly, making sure that they have minimal DNA in common. Often 'random' ensures that weird coincidences happen.

4) The Toba theory claims that humans had a bottleneck of 3,000-10,000 individuals. 10,000 is a HIGH end, not a low end of what we need.

Of course, it also points out the flaws in Burning Man.

If you don't want to do X, then you look stupid complaining about Y when X is an obvious solution.

Another issue is what happens when people cheat. Pretty much the only punishment the blockers can do is to physically prevent anyone at all from using the fast exit lane.

My best suggestion to deal with this issue is simple - money. That is, tell people that they can in fact either use the proper license plate timed exist OR buy their way into the express lane via an excessive charge. Call it $500.

Just a few people buying this would put some money into the system, letting them pay people to act as flaggers, spotters and stoppers. You could also offer cheaters a way to continue on their way - just pay the $500 fee.

There is of course a single major problem with my addendum to your idea: The philosophical bent of Burning Man is probably against this monetary solution.

'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"

Isn't it sort of an indictment of our culture that we do something for casual entertainment that we would never allow ourselves to do for the purposes of advancing human scientific knowledge?

I was told 'Just So' by Rudyard Kipling:

How the Leopard got his spots