> Helped that she was a friend of the instructor.

So what you are saying is that there was even more luck involved than whether or not you were wealthy. Look, I too learned Turbo Pascal in the eighties, when I was 15/16. I had learned basic before (on a Sinclair ZX 81) when I was around 13.

However, I will promptly admit it has less to do with my will than with a set of fortunate coincidences including:
1) I had the intellectual predisposition towards the theme;
2) My parents had the philosophy of investing in education (if a child wants to study/practice, he/she will (be it music, languages, computers, sports, whatever)
3) My parents were wealthy enough to go far in point number 2 above;
4) My father was an engineer and brought home a computer at a time very few people did;

I remember well the time. It was 1986/87, I was already crazy about computers when I went as an exchange student to the US. I met several american families. Not one (back in 1986/87) had an IBM PC XT at home. (if you want the stats, I saw two families with Commodore 64s, one with a TI-99, two with Apple IIc's (brand new at the time) and one guy with an IBM PC Jr. Several had no computer. Before retuning to my country I purchased an IBM PC XT (through Computer Shopper, how else?). I also got the Turbo Pascal 3.0 full package -- which included Turbo Tutor and a bunch of coding examples, such as Gameworks, Editor Toolbox, etc. Oh the memories, it looked like this http://bit.ly/lkxM6D or this http://bit.ly/is74Id

Anyway, I would not be so blasè, and say "Where there's a a will..." I believe my experience and your experience are exceptional and the result of a series of factors that came together by chance.

So, I wonder, what would "an innocent soldier" be? Perhaps soldier which has not and does not plan to murder anyone?
Just asking...

> The result is that all successful world leaders and business leaders are sociopaths. And I make that statement not as a generalization, but as a fact. There are probably some exceptions such as, perhaps the Dalai Lama, but that is the only exception I can think of. (Can you think of more?)

Well, I wouldn't make such a broad generalization, though I certainly think power and sociopathy correlate with each other. I have a few business heroes, they include Warren Buffet, Bill Gates (yes, him), Steve Jobs. The first two donated so much for charitable causes, their whole fortune is going to help people. The last one came through so humane and sensible in that Stanford graduation video... it is really hard for me to picture them as sociopaths/psychopaths.

I think your comment is spot on, and sexual privacy in face of societal pressures is one of the greatest issues when considering privacy. I remember some time ago couple who got divorced in Germany because a speeding ticket camera caught the guy with his woman lover in the passeger seat. The guy later sued the city for violating his privacy. Our two faced attitude towards sex must be confronted/discussed at length as society evolves. Progress is being made (with homossexuals being able to go out in public and all) but this is an evolution that will likely take many generations.

Yet for all that agreement, I'd like to point what I think is a misconception in you post:

The idea that violence and disregard for other people's life is natural, and that education and police is what prevents us from destroying each other is actually false. I recommend taking a look at the work of primatologist Frans de Waal, in particular his book "Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals" link Essentially we are hard wired to feel empathy, and empathy compells us to do good to others (those of us who are not psychopaths, of course).

So many commenters apparently did not RTFA. So, let me make a summary of Scott Adam's position, as stated in TFA:

As such, he brings a very interesting proposition:
(1) Privacy has a price, in terms of a society's economy and institutional efficiency;
(2) If that price were made clear, how much would you be willing to pay?

Put it that way it seems a fair conclusion that, left to market forces, in the end privacy will lose. Because the price of privacy is unevenly distributed in society -- some people will gain nothing ("I have nothing to hide") some people will gain the world ("I really really really want to smuggle these cuban cigars") -- and those opting for privacy, once a minority, may well be discriminated as "having something to hide".

To those that can't imagine how the lack of privacy can help, let me remind you of two examples that are paying off very well for our willing exposure:

• Ebay - The reputation of buyers and sellers is generally (and voluntarily) open for everyone to see -- nothing is under the sheets. Some people try to game the system, but are quickly flushed out. Users should recognize that public (not private) reputation is critical for it working at all.

• LastFM - You let them know every song you listen, they let you know what songs you should probably listen. It works, it is great. The Google search engine in part does the same thing -- letting "the hive" and its exposed usage data refine search results. Have you once clicked at your search history to see how much Google remembers about you? (go ahead, try it https://www.google.com/history/ )

Here's another hint: advertisers want to buy "impressions", or exposures of their product/brand to eyeballs. Having a greater supply of these impressions (by Wikipedia starting to supply them) would decrease (not increase) the cost of advertising. It's the old supply and demand dynamics.

When you work at the marketing area of a large corporation you see that they set the advertising budget first (usually using a % of revenues metric comparable to their peers) and then (only then) look for where they will spend it. At that point they will seek the most efficient way to advertise, and the existence of yet another venue to advertise on (such as Wikipedia, or a new cable channel) will only impact the efficient solution, not the advertising budget.

+1 Insightful
(no mod points)

If I may add, the fact that the earth is finite is not a restriction to world growth. Think about cable TV. It is there, stuff you can buy, interesting stuff -- but not really consuming the earth. Think fiber optics, which gives you broadband, fiber optics is glass, and glass was all sand -- like silicon waffers. We are making GDP and "stuff to buy" out of sand, energy and technology. The fact that the earth is finite is not a restriction. Read "the bottomless well" (http://amzn.to/9LpiEH) for an excellent argument on why energy in the long term will not be a problem.

> AC is not right. What i am saying is that if money is suppose to represent what you can buy, then "growth" means there must be a lot more "stuff" to buy/use etc. Yet earth is very finite. The idea of perpetual growth is as crazy as perpetual motion.

That is a provocative thought. Yet... When you invest in a stock it is like investing in a company. Over the years the value of the stock grows because the company itself grows (making more "stuff" or servicing more needs, in this service economy of ours) and also because the money the company generated in that interval gets invested in other companies that will, themselves, grow. The money you invested is fueling the coming into existence of more "stuff" to purchase.

So it is not a zero sum game. And yes, it is restricted to the reality of how much stuff there is the world. Unbelievably as it may be, the world GDP (= the total stuff available to buy)does grow exponentially. Developed countries grow at about 2% to 3% per year, developing countries grow 7%-10% per year. In total the real growth is around 3% to 5% (excepting a few recession years).

See
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+gdp+history
http://www.indexmundi.com/world/gdp_real_growth_rate.html

Turning US$ 2 Billion into US$ 100 Billion in 100 years is no big deal. One just needs a 4% return above inflation. That is trivial for a good asset manager with a long term outlook.

In fact, make it into the "120 year starship program" and we will have US$ 220 Billion to play (don't you love compound interest rates?).

This is April Fools' gold:
>Without access to oxygen, bacteria cannot break down plant material. (...)
>Instead of trying to manufacture ethanol from switchgrass, would it be more effective to burn oil and bury the switchgrass? We sometimes pay farmers not to grow crops to sustain prices; should we pay them to grow otherwise useless crops and stockpile them? (...)
> Can leaves, bark and branches that are now discarded or burned be piled up instead? Is it more beneficial to recycle paper or to collect it? (...)
>The writer is the director of production planning at The Post.

LOL In the end I get it. The writer of this Washington Post article is the guy in charge of printing the paper-version of the Washington Post (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/hugh-price/7/2a8/68a). And he is trying to build an argument that producing paper and stockpiling it may be the solution to the environmental problems of our times! ("Help the Planet, Get the Paper Version instead of the online version!")
Reality can be funnier than fiction.

He does have a point... a trivial one.

Big media used to be the 500 pound gorilla. These days it is more and more looking like Clint Eastwood in the movie "San Torino".

This text is great. Is it an original? I searched for some of the phrases you used in google and it sounds so...
You're spot on. Reversed Pascal's Wager into a sure bet. Congrats.

Some mainstream clothing brands with decent products I will pass by only because they have a big goofy patch or embroidered logo.

Same here. I will not pay to get a job as a walking billboard for clothing brands.

But I am not as radical as a cab driver I met, who would take out all signs from the automaker from his car. He even covered the logo at the center of the driving wheel with a red sticker... "This is not Ford's -- this is my car -- I paid for it, I am still paying for it!"

> This is why radical atheism should be considered to be a religion. Blind faith in ANYTHING can bring irrationality. Yes, not collecting stamps is not a hobby, but avoiding touching a stamp could be considered to be a hobby.

Avoiding touching a stamp is not a hobby: it is OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) -- a mental illness.
Likewise that man's defining characteristic is not religion -- he is mentally ill.

Blind faith is not the bringer of irrationality: blind faith is irrationality in itself. Saying this mad man is a man of faith is a tautology, IMHO.

And let me object to the "radical atheism" label, while we are at it. How many degrees of "no god" are there to make someone a radical atheist?