The problem here (Piketty, as well as Reinhart and Rogoff) isn't simple, data-intensive apps (that would be a business app developer's problem, perhaps you are one). It's demonstrating an innovative, scientific analysis in an easy to review format. These economist papers aren't that data intensive... they usually have much less data than a typical business app.

https://gist.github.com/vincen...
(169K as uncompressed text)

Its the analysis that is the value here. The rather short, and a computationally non-intensive analysis in Reinhart and Rogoff paper triggered financial effects to the tune of probably trillions of dollars across Europe, some would argue prematurely.

The solution for this problem is a statistical package with a notebook presentation. The ideal case would probably be R with knitr. It allows one to combine snippets of code, with data, output and documentation to discuss the analysis & results in easy to understand chunks.

IPython notebook is also an excellent alternative.
Here is a demonstration of how Reinhart-Rogoff paper should have submitted the data.
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/gi...
I am sure, someone will do a Piketty one soon as well.

> Meh * 2

Those are your preferences. I have mine. But they are functional features nonetheless.

> you also get a bloated semantic desktop shoved down your throat for no good reason

As opposed to Windows (the post I am responding to) not having any features that I don't need?

> What makes you so sure?

It's not a question of being sure. I said *better* trust, not absolute trust, which does not exist.

Aside from the shell, these are the things I do get with Linux that I don't with Windows, out-of-the-box.

- Virtual desktops
- Compiz effects
- KDE Activities
- A package manager with a huge package repository
- All open source libraries that just compile and work. Mingw works, but doesn't quite cut it.
- No upgrade costs
- No need to pay for each and every machine/VM
- Better OS trust in a post-NSA world.
- Ability to run the latest OS that still receives updates on the weakest hardware (with IceWM).

What I do miss
- Speech Recognition
- Better Text to Speech

> more awesome at what

Everything. But if I had to pick one feature, I would say Activities.
Apparently, they are not still that widely used. But they are the defining feature of KDE 4 and are quite impressive once you understand to exploit them (docs could be better).

> eye candy?

KDE 4 does not look good, out of the box (Gnome 3, Cinnamon, Pantheon are what I consider to be good looking DEs, out of the box). With a little tweaking though, it looks as good or better than all my (also tweaked) desktops.

Right now, I feel that KDE 4 is a potentially great looking desktop, that is the most functional and the most configurable of the lot - just like KDE 3 was in its day.

The earlier KDE 4 releases were not good. The recent KDE editions are excellent.

Same here. I had just one prof who used his own book in his course. He simply gave the draft doc file to the class and said that buying the book is optional. I went to his book signing. He said that these academic books were rarely worth the time costs (since they cater to niche fields and so few get sold) and that his friend who writes fiction makes waaay more. Writing a book to him was more of an honor and about cementing his prestige in the field.

Now, the publishers might be profiting; I doubt that the profs are... unless the book is widely used across the nation in some popular discipline, and is generally considered a classic textbook.

> Periodically do searches for things you're not remotely interested in

Any attempt to fight an inexpensive algorithm, with expensive cognitive activity, especially when you have no feedback on how you are effecting the system, is a losing proposition. Fight automation with automation, or just don't bother.

> Clearly, the best path for people to take is to start feeding misinformation into the system.

These systems are probabilistic, not deterministic. So, they are pretty much built with the assumption that they won't be getting perfect data. Your occasional misdirections won't mean a thing. They will just go below the threshold of significance.

Fair enough. I don't disagree. It would be expensive to provide incentives to rich, smart people. But perhaps it won't be too hard to provide incentives to poor, smart people :-). Hey, humanities grad students, you will do :-).

> In today's developed countries, there are lots of benefits to not having kids, so people who are smart, intelligent, and wealthy are increasingly avoiding them. Meanwhile, the people likely to have the most kids are people who are less intelligent, poor, have less resources, etc.

If we, as a society, really believe this reasoning, then there are ways to realign incentives, at least until someone screams: eugenics... because that's what it is.

> If you think I was trying to claim freezing eggs will lead to the decline of human intelligence you're an idiot.

I don't post based on what you think. I have no access to that info nor should I be expected to. I post based on what you post.

Personally, I thought that the opposite is true...that people who have kids are selfish (and I may yet be one among those selfish people - not decided yet)... since they are adding kids to a planet that can do with a lot fewer of them.

The "replenishment" argument has not made sense in centuries. Not having a baby is the most green thing one can do. Babies have bigger carbon footprints than *anything* else you can have and most probably (unless some revolution of green technologies hits soon) more than everything else you do.

Parents having children later in life also exerts some downward pressure on population growth, even if we retain fertility rates. So more power to those who choose this technology.

https://xkcd.com/603/

Yes, but something tells me that these women would not be wanting to have 3 kids like you, perhaps just the token kid to be a parent at all... or at most two. You can do that at a grandparent age.

At a later age, I also imagine that a parent would be a bit more wise about being a parent... and generally have a better understanding about how to deal with people, kids or otherwise. A more emotionally mature household might also effect kids differently.

I am just speculating of course. I wonder what the stats are on fertility rates of parents who start late and take this route. I also wonder what the performance stats of kids are when raised by older parents. I know autism risk goes up, among other things... but that's for unfrozen eggs of natural late motherhood. We know that kids of young parents (as in teen mothers) don't do as well, intellectually, as those from older parents. Does that relationship taper off? or does it continue linearly?

This is a fairly common pattern for studies. You have a strong suspicion. Then you do a study, which is to collect and analyze the data systematically. That way, a principled debate may be had and further efforts may refine our understanding. Without basing it on data and method, it will just be a shouting match; your opinion against mine. Politics & ideologies vs. science.

The common understanding of science - that scientists do studies without some an expectation of results at some level, and simply walk into results in complete serendipity, is a myth. The purpose of studies is also to quantify the strength of expected relationship with a probability of error.

So yes, doing studies for things you might consider to be common truths is not silly at all.

The thing is: this is not *true* capitalism. Adam Smith's core assumption about capitalism working was about people providing services NOT being able to co-ordinate among themselves, price-fix, create non-compete agreements and form monopolies. If anyone is lobbying, buying laws etc. we are no longer talking about capitalism or free market.

What we see now in advanced (or at least, complicated) markets is not pure capitalism at all. The only relevance of the term today is that it is used as an emotional term in political rhetoric... like freedom. Same goes for *true* communism. Neither is feasible or sensible in the world we live.

And it is not a choice between these two extremes either. What we have today is something much more complex, with almost a combination of every economic idea that ever was. We need another ground breaking economist to make sense of this all.

> The Western world decided to shift from a growth system, where women bear and raise children and the able bodied population slowly increases, to a system where the women enter the work force and children are few in number.

I will try to give a greater context than what a reading of actuary tables might give a young insurance agent. The roots of the current condition are far deeper than any single social revolution of any generation.

Yes, women entering the work force had an effect of natural decline in population growth. They were a sort of reserve capacity. Yes, this eventually will have a depressing effect on the economy. We still have some more reserve capacity, namely, expanding the work years of the population in reasonable ways by creating new opportunities for the elderly to be productive and remain engaged in society and be dependent for fewer years. After exhausting that last bit of reserve, we will perhaps truly stagnate.

However, relying on population growth is no longer sustainable. The human population has not slowly increased in the last few centuries, it had *exploded*. UK, for instance, increased its population by 2x in 1500 years (0-1500) and 20x in the 500 years after. While I am not suggesting that it should implode, it must go into a decline for centuries to come if we expect to thrive on this planet, long term. The environmental pressure and resource drainage initiated by your generation, and continued by ours, is spectacular. The difference between the environmental footprint of poor rural nations and the most prosperous nations today is 100-150x.

The western (and especially US) experience of abundance since WWII is also anomalous. It relied on the huge productivity differentials from the rest of the world. Now the world is slowly equalizing as the other populations also tap into their reserve capacities. So once again, to expect beyond the prosperity of your generation, baring another fundamental technology revolution, is not reasonable.

We will stagnate. But in context of what humanity went through, through our history (wars, disease, famine, ignorance), current "stagnation", which may last for centuries, is not that horrible, just mildly annoying. So we won't have even larger houses, trinkets and whatever that we don't really need. Is it really that natural or sustainable for everyone to want vacations on the other side of the planet? We still will lead relatively secure, healthy & engaged lives and that's enough.

The world was stagnant for much of its history. The growth spurt, the adolescence of mankind, from the industrial revolution onward, will have to slow at some point. The economists are simply wrong to target growth to the exclusion or detriment of everything else (in human growth terms - its wishing for Gigantism or taking steroids: ultimately the piper needs to be paid). It is OK for humans to settle down at this standard of living. We can think of growth once again, after it is viable to leave this planet. Now, more than ever, it is important for humanity to understand satisfaction.