75 thoughts on “The Open Thread: January 2017

    1. This video also illustrates how many moronic women are out there, and how few smart ones. A ratio of 1:100 sounds about right.

    2. I’d use this opportunity to wish you a prosperous New Year. May you overshoot all your goals for 2017, and then some ^_^

    3. Ann Coulter rocks! I love her politically incorrect sarcasm that drives liberals and leftists insane.

    4. Are these people a fair representation of US society? If so, I couldn’t imagine living there, ever.

    5. People tend to live in a bubble, being rather unaware of how the “real world” actually looks like. No matter where you go, the average person is, quite frankly, a complete moron.

    6. All depends on whether lower socioeconomic status is a confounding factor. Both crime and single parenthood are more common among the poor.

    7. In the end it would boil down to low IQ and poor impulse control, but those wouldn’t be politically correct statements, so instead we pump money into affirmative action programs and send a few token blacks with mediocre SATs to Harvard every year.

    8. That guy really is an enormous mangina.

      But I have to agree with Ann. I mean, given how widespread and cheap anticonception is these days, especially in Europe, how on earth can you still get pregnant?

      What she’s clearly mentioning is the celebration of not needing a man, whereas single dad’s, don’t get a celebration.

      She did an awesome job!

    9. You have to keep in mind that there are strong incentives for the underclass to procreate. A professional would not bother making babies to get some handouts from the government, but if you’re a bona fide parasite from the ghetto, then three or four kids you don’t give a fuck about provide you with copious amounts of “free” money, and you probably get a bigger place, paid for by “the government”, i.e. the taxpayer, on top. One could legitimately ask what the eventual outcome is if society subsidizes limitless procreation of its dumbest and laziest members. I’d say that a good case could be made that if a family has been living off welfare for three or four generations, they are utterly useless, and sterilization would be in order. If that doesn’t fly due to some bullshit “human rights” (what about my “human rights” to not be a wage slave to the dregs of society?), then we could easily make up some laws, or enforce existing ones, and simply build some more prisons. Within a generation, that problem would largely be solved.

    10. “then we could easily make up some laws, or enforce existing ones, and simply build some more prisons. Within a generation, that problem would largely be solved.”
      Could elaborate on the laws + the prisons with an example? I can’t follow your train of thought.
      Thx

    11. Prisons would separate the sexes, and in order to keep someone from procreating, he or she would only need to break a law that gets them locked up. An easy example would be: eliminate welfare and make it a law (what about calling it a “human duty”) to not be a parasite. If someone is able-bodied, yet unwilling to work, they get locked up. Labor camps and debtor’s prisons were once commonplace.

    1. Being the intellectually curious over-analyzer that I am, I have interviewed hundreds of female friends… then researched this topic further (both in terms of female content online and scientific research)…

      The answer is “It depends on what you define as a signal”. If you use the female definition of a signal, then yes, 100% of women out there always sending out signals. If you’re using the average guy’s definition of a “signal”, then 99% of women rarely show signals when sober. And it’s not just the average guy’s definition of a signal… Hollywood/Entertainment also represents women as having proactive signalling (which they rarely do in real life).

      The number one signal that women send out is “just being in the same room” or “accepting to be in the same room as you”. I know this sounds strange and weird and lame… It boggles the mind, but a huge majority of women out there believe that their mere physical presence is a sign.

      Let me give you an example of a super-duper direct signal… Girl (let’s call her Jane) has a huge crash on me and will do anything to get me. So she makes a bold move… After an event i’m hosting, she waits for the other participants to clear out until it’s just me and her friend in the event-room. No, she doesn’t approach me… She just makes sure to lag behind with her friend so we’re in the same room when most people leave. She doesn’t say anything, she just creates the conditions for ME to initiate that 1-on-1 conversation (or 1 on 2 in this case).

      If this example sounds unimpressive… that’s because women’s signalling is quite cowardly and unimpressive. That’s like the peak of female directness. It doesn’t get any more direct.

    2. The first time I learned about this absurdity was when a female friend of mine whined that men were such loserish wimps. (Apparently she defines all men as being in one of 2 categories… Either the too wimpy, or too pushy category).

      So I had her elaborate… and she gave me this mind-boggling insane example. She hung-out with a guy 2-3 times, and he never made a move.

      So I ask her, ok which signs did you give him?

      She: I HUNG OUT WITH HIM
      Me: No, but what sign did you give him that you’re romantically (sexually) interested
      Her: I WENT OUT WITH HIM THREE TIMES!!!!

      Most women i’ve talked to do not see the logical contradiction

      – These same women will COMPLAIN “Why did Jake make a move when I’m totally not interested in more than friendship!!”

      – But will also complain “Why did Bob not make a move!! What a freaking wimp”, even though she gave the exact same signs as she gives to jake… Namely physical presence and unsexual friendly conversations.

      How the fuck do women not see the logical contradiction? In one case they’re implying that the rule is “If a woman is tolerating you, make a move”… But in the other case they’re implying “if you make a move just because a woman was tolerating you, then you’re a creep, coz it doesn’t mean she was interested…”

      Is your mind blown at this fucking logical mindfuck? Mine was for years…

    3. “Is your mind blown at this fucking logical mindfuck? Mine was for years…”
      No, mine is not (but was, too).
      I just understood (very recently) that self perception is always comfortable and full of excuses. Add to that that nobody WANTS to change. It’s seems easy to understand that your actions and thoughts produce the world you live in. But it kinda seems difficult to draw the only possible conclusion from it and that is: You want another result, do something else, i.e. change. Do more sports to be in shape, give better signals, to get that guy attention, etc.
      Your female friend expected a different result from the same action. Einstein called this insanity. I wouldn’t dare to disagree.

    4. Fortunately, there is an answer. The answer is that women suck at communicating the solution. It seems as if you’re “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” doesn’t it?

      The truth is there is a solution. Aaron introduces it in Minimal Game by the way… Go buy it as a way of saying thanks, don’t just thank me in this comment…

      The solution is understanding that women are very poor communicators in this area and bad at making the subtle differences. The same they are supposed to be good at.

      Let me explain it this way

      Let’s say that moves fall on a spectrum of 1 to 20…

      – With 20 being you pushing your cock up against her and grinding her as you pull her hair back (or i dunno grab her pussy as you lean into her face and talk dirty)

      – With 1 being something like “Leaning in a little closer than normal and/or having deeper more sultry eye contact”.

      When women complain about guys making a move, it’s about the level being inappropriate

      You’re like wait, if women give no signals, but then also complain when you make a move, what are you to do? Die a virgin or just accept being a douche?

      The solution is that you only make a low-level move… That’s why it seems like there’s a logical contradiction. When women say “I hate it when men make a move”… In most cases it’s “I hate he went directly to a level 7 move and kept communicating at level 7 despite me still being at level 1”.

      Women give most of their signals in a proceptive manner

      That means in reaction to your moves. The most common sign a girl can and will give is accepting your advances. That’s how human mating works.

      So why do they believe they’re being proactive?

      Actually, they are proactive, they just start at a low level and move up the levels gradually. So a girl will be:

      – In the same room as you
      – Occasionally glance in your direction
      – Find excuses to walk past you
      – Get her friends to move/stand near you (your group)

      In her mind she’s being both very proactive and very direct. Talk to some female friends, you’ll be amazed how much they think they’re doing. A girl will merely move within seeing distance of a guy… and if he doesn’t approach her, she will say “she got rejected”. I’m not even fucking kidding.

      Also proceptive proactivity

      As you approach her in a casual nonsexual way… (level 2 signalling) she will respond back in the same casual non-sexual way. In her mind, THE FACT SHE:

      a) made it physically possible for you to approach her
      b) she confirmed level 2 (by not being a bitch and not moving away physically)

      She actually takes credit for moving the interaction/mating process further. In her mind, when you approached her, and she didn’t act negative, she contributed her part to taking things to level 3. Yes, women love to take credit for lame non-work…

      Just move up the ladder to keep getting those signs

      She gave you the “i’m ok with your unsexual presence” sign, move forward to level 3… Deepen the eye-contact, occasionally lean-in… etc etc…

      Does this process seem slow and cumbersome?

      Actually it’s not… You can sometimes go from level 1 (friendly hello) to her stroking your cock… all in like 90 seconds… Women don’t mind you moving fast. They just want to give the “I approve of this level” sign at each level before level 20.

      You can have situations where each level is just a couple of seconds long…

    5. And this is where experience comes into play. With experience you can get confident at reading signs to the point where you can skip levels more often, or start at higher levels.

      Like when you’re inexperienced with women, you’ll have to start at level 2 (friendly hello), and make more gradual moves…

      – then you make a level 3 move (slightly more leaning body language)
      – then she confirms she likes this (she gave you a sign by not moving away)
      – so you make a level 4 move
      – she gives you a sign by confirming level 4
      – so you make a level 5 move
      – she gives you a sign by confirming level 5

      With experience you get to skip stuff

      Like just by seeing a girl hovering next to you, from experience you’ll “just know” when you can go directly initiating an interaction at level 5 DIRECTLY. Or you’ll just be able to ‘feel’ if you can skip levels. Like go from level 2 to level7, or from level 7 to level 13…

      Is this an oversimplified model of mating?

      Only slightly… In practice women do other things, not just “confirming level you initiated”, like throw hints, initiate touches, giving you “TheLook”… but those are less reliable and not at the core of the mating process.

      When women want to take credit they want to exaggerate how much they do, but for the most part your life will be easier if you define “signs” as “when she confirms current level is ok”.

      Bonus: “The look”

      There’s this look that women give when they want you to make a move. It can’t be taught, you’ll learn it from experience. It basically means “you can skip 5-10 levels”. When you get “the look” in the middle of a friendly conversation, you know you can just lean in and kiss her… When you get “the look” in the middle of a flirty conversation, you know you can just say “let’s go to my place” and it will work (most of the time).

      Tl:dr

      For practical purposes, the only 3 signs that women give are:

      a) Being with you
      b) Accepting level increases
      c) The look

      It’s a pretty good Occam’s razor that will make your life easy.

    6. To use my own example from before to illustrate things. When my idiotic female acquaintance complained about “the wimp”… Let’s translate what she said.

      She: I HUNG OUT WITH HIM
      Me: No, but what sign did you give him that you’re romantically (sexually) interested
      Her: I WENT OUT WITH HIM THREE TIMES!!!!

      Translation: I kept reaffirming level 5 (being together with him in a location with neither of our friends)… I put myself in a level 5 situation with him a whole three times… (that’s 400 minutes of affirming and re-affirming level5).

      So I kept reaffirming level 5 to this dude, and he never made a level 6 move!!! What a wimp!!!

      You might be asking now, but doesn’t that represent the same problem as earlier?

      I mean she can accept level 5 with a guy she doesn’t want to bang (post level 20)… Maybe she just wants to be friends? How does this model solve anything? Isn’t it the same bullshit and logical paradox as before?

      I mean, if she’s hanging out with you, maybe she’s just friendly, maybe she wants your D. You can’t know, right?

      The answer is you can’t know anything more than what she’s telling you

      And women never tell you 20 levels above the current interaction’s level (unless you’re Justin Bieber).

      All that “i’m accepting level 5 means” is “it’s ok to make a level 6 move”. It DOES NOT MEAN she will accept it. It just means she’ll be ok with you making it. That’s it.

      == If she’s giving the “level 5 is ok” sign, that means one of 2 things ==
      a) I want level 6 (and will also accept it)
      b) I don’t want level 6 (but will be flattered if you try)

      Yes, the female of our species is like that, selfish. Women LITERALLY believe they are being proactive by giving you the chance to get rejected. She’s not saying “I want you to make a level 6 moves”. She’s only saying “i might or might not want you to make a level 6 move, but your odds are reasonable”.

      That’s the bad news. Unless you’re a rockstar, you will never get women confirming you will succeed at the final level. “Fuck me bieber now, please take me in your rooom pleaseeeeee!!!”

      So the entitled bitch in my example believes men owe her level 6

      You’d be surprised how many women are entitled like this. Now only does she believe she was proactive for merely confirming level 5. SHE BELIEVES SHE IS OWED level 6 because of it. As evidenced at how they talk about guys who don’t make the move

      The good news is they do talk well of guys who do make the move

      If she’s giving the “i’m loving this level 5” sign… and then you make a level 6 move… she will reward you for it. Even if she says no thanks… She’ll still be flattered that you tried to escalate and appreciate you for it.

      So there’s your solution to the paradox. When women complain about guys making moves, it’s when a level 3 approved guy made a level 15 move.

      Women punish/shame guys for:

      – making a move too large
      – not making a move

      This means there is NO WAY TO ACHIEVE BOTH GOALS:

      – Avoid rejection
      AND
      – Avoid shaming/punishment

      Pick one or the other… you can’t have both…

      The good news is that if you move gradually and don’t skip steps, the worst you’ll ever face is a “very flattered and deligthed no thanks, but you’re so awesome for trying, thank you dude, can i hook you up with a friend?”

  1. I believe you hit this point a lot in your books when you talk about how the reason bouncers won’t let certain people into clubs as a means of doing them a favor because they feel they wouldn’t fit in/have fun in the venue and I think it was either you or someone else talked about how 99% of all guys are like fish out of water outside of their own social circle. I think it’s interesting and very true, but I don’t understand why pickup companies and just others in general believe everyone should be able to fit in at all the mainstream bars/clubs that play only top 40 music and acting like an unfiltered loud jackass is the key way to build ‘social status’.

  2. Looks like, for a nodding and agreeing circle jerk and virtue signalling that he thinks single mothers are just so goddamned virtuous and therefor he is virtuous, some cuck priest invited Ann Coulter on his show, along with 100 dumb bitches who only back their arguments with anecdotes and ad hominem attacks. What a pitiful excuse for entertainment.

    1. I’d fuck Ann Coulter, even though she’s in her 50s. Heck, she is way hotter than any prominent leftist woman I could think of.

  3. “In the end it would boil down to low IQ and poor impulse control, but those wouldn’t be politically correct statements, so instead we pump money into affirmative action programs and send a few token blacks with mediocre SATs to Harvard every year.”

    You did read The Curse of the high IQ by Aaron Clarey I assume.
    If not, don’t bother, that’s pretty much his point.

    1. No, I didn’t, but I’ve seen enough of the world to draw the same conclusion as Aaron Clarey. Here is a great example of a token black student the Ivies were salivating over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWljxInJR_4
      His SAT score is roughly in the 25th percentile, i.e. the bottom quarter of the incoming class. As a privileged whitey, they’d laugh at you at HYP with such a score, and ask your dad whether he’d be interested in donating half a million dollars to boost your chances of admission. Joking aside, you better be a “legacy” or play some of the Ivy sports like polo if you wanted to get in which such a low SAT score.

    2. Maybe it’s just me, but when I see the way he is wearing his tie, he just can’t be smart.
      One of those patterns which pretty much always give very precise hints at a character. Same for female shoes. You can deduct from them if they are timid or not.

    3. No, I don’t think he’s smart at all. For a prime example of a token black, look no further than Michelle Obama. Heck, the US has an effing token black president who is a complete disaster. Michelle’s Bachelor’s thesis at Princeton is some of the most ridiculously bad writing I have seen in my life. That woman would have deserved a life as a welfare queen in the ghetto. Instead, the taxpayer got to enjoy the charade of her being first lady.

  4. Ann Coulter is sort of like the Joseph Goebbels of the alt-right in the US. Any cursory examination of her comments would indicate she is a really nasty piece of work. Regarding single mothers, Chris Rock said it best: You can be a single mother….You can also drive a car using your feet. Just because it can be done, does not mean it is recommended.

  5. Goodamn, Alek, do you ever get tired of writing the same stuff year after year with almost no change at all? It’s like you’r a broken record – no growth, no evolution, no development of ideas, no growth in emotional maturity and tone. The same old thing, all overly complicated and convoluted, expressed the exact same way, the same anger and bitterness – no development of wisdom, no mellowing out, no growing acceptance of the strange and weird ways of the world.

    No insight either, no understanding that the capitalism you celebrate contributes to the shitty behavior of women by destroying cultural and social standards in favor of a selfish culture of everyone for themselves.

    It was fun at first, but my God man! Grow a bit, develop a bit, get some insight, develop emotionally – anything!

    Even Aaron Sleazy is changing his persona – for the worse, sure, but its a phase he’ll pass through. You don’t seem to have “phases”, you’re stuck.

    Snap out of it, man!

    1. The people asking the question are new. They weren’t around 2-3-4 years ago. Sometimes I do say “browse the old blog and find the answer, we’ve discussed it before”… but that would make me selfish wouldn’t it.

      Sometimes I and inspired and decide since I’m procrastinating anyway I can type out the answer in 5 minutes, which I do. I’m saving the guys dozens of hours of browsing to find previous instances/discussions on the old blog.

      You call it convoluted, I call it “wanting to cover all bases, and not having time to edit”

      It’s a compromise with the fact I only have 5-7 minutes free and am doing this out of procrastination. Some people watch catvideos, some people watch TV shows, I answer questions here.

      Editing it down to be elegant (un-convoluted) would take 40 minutes. I am unselfish to strangers, but not THAT unselfish.

      Covering all bases – is about covering all sub-questions so the answer is complete, versus with vague parts. I’d be a hypocrite if i didn’t do it, since I’m always ranting against it. My problem with self-help authors/professional advice gives is that they give the answer in such a way that it opens more questions than it solves. Thereby prolonging the process instead of shortening it.

      P.S

      I grew up in a communist country. My grandfather was imprisoned for not being communist enough. Barely escaped execution. And no, women in non-capitalist countries aren’t any less selfish/entitled.

    2. Appreciate Novy writing in, he seems to be on a roll in 2017! =D

      Even if you, Bruce, think it’s repetitive, bottom line is, if something stated is useful, it bears worth repeating!

      Sorta like re-reading classic books or any book (Red Pill Handbook, Rational Male, Book of Pook, Minimal Game) to refresh the memory on principals…

      …happy 2017!

  6. She has a point but she’s is atrocious at arguing. All these right fags are trying to hard to be edge lords and play the victim when the moron leftys act exactly as expected when inflammatory statements are made. It makes me think that everyone just wants to belittle each other rather than discussing. Like the smoking and single parent analogy was just prime lefty bait how fucking dumb is she. Of course these people are too stupid to see the similarity between the two and are going to take it emotionally. Obviously there is a massive correlation between single parents and higher rates of crime but there are a lot of confounding factors that add to the problems of the black community in america, i.e. welfare abuse is the biggest issue, welfare fucks up anyone it touches (excluding genuinely disabled and old people).

    1. If I was to ask my my mother if she has been abusive with me she’d deny.
      Anyone I have shared details from my childhood agrees that she’s abusive. Now go argue with her…
      Same problem with these bitches in the audience. They all deserve to be shot, really.

  7. Why is your blog archive not classified into themes like women, business, sex, confidence, money, economy and so on?
    Everytime i want to read your posts/opinion on different topics, i type that topic and your name in google and get mostly crap or be directed to sites where someone writes he heard someone says aaron sleazy said “….”

    1. There is only so much spare time in a day, and I rather write an article instead of categorizing and cataloguing.

  8. Concern trolls often accuse me, and often accuse Aaron of being “Mean, Angry” etc

    Stefan has a good overview on why this is a manipulation technique. You’ll notice it almost* always comes from people who it turns out are leftists, marxists, feminists etc…

    Stefan also covers why getting angry at gaslighters, manipulators and outright liers is quite normal.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=800wjcl62iw&feature=youtu.be&t=2m25s

    Being upset over intellectual dishonesty is quite healthy. Passionate anger is healthy when in the face of unbridled bullshit.

    *- the almost always is me playing it safe, I’ve never seen a non-leftist do it.

    1. I’ve never thought this to be a manipulation technique as you say.
      I like yours and Aaron’s style because it is pragmatic and I believe to be pragmatic takes intelligence and balls – both are a rare commodity.
      But you got me thinking: If indeed concern trolls aim to manipulate, this would imply that they are mean characters, destructive personalities. Frankly, a lot of people are. Quite tragic, if you think about it.

    2. I’ll quote Michael Douglas here:
      “The mind will always look for a way to express itself.”
      Makes sense?

    3. I’ll quote Michael Douglas here:
      “The mind will always look for a way to express itself.”
      Makes sense?

      Nope. Elaborate?

    4. I don’t think that a person you refer to as a concern troll, goes on the internet thinking: “let’s see who I can manipulate today”.
      Look at all the comments over the last blog posts here which refer to Aaron as “mean” or “angry”. Their mind just expresses itself the same way Aaron’s & yours expresses itself. Now, before this gets all touchy-feely-new-age-feel-good-philosophy: These people have rotten minds and so is their expression.
      People can only handle provocation up to a certain degree, then they start shooting back, since it gets uncomfortable to confront their feelings.
      Because if you were to ask them “what do you really feel?”, they will load up all their defensive mechanisms. In a personal eye-to-eye conversation, they’ll drift away, “mhm, yeah, maybe, I don’t know….” gazing away and so on. Here on the internet, all the hate can come out without having to look into the eyes of anyone. Why do they have so much hate? That they have to find out themselves, but, as Aaron stated in another blog post, this can rarely be done without professional help. This is partly because they actually judge themselves for having this hate in them, although if you were to unwind their personal life from early on, I’m convinced you’d find the reasons.
      What I’m trying to get across, is that most of the people in this world are not at peace with themselves and have conflicting brutal and violent thoughts and desires in them. The desire to harm, to cause pain, to torture. But it’s all hidden behind that facade which seems to be so emotionless. In fact they are just lifeless shadows of themselves afraid to get in touch with their anger. An anger that is routed in the unconscious mind, which (and that’s very important) is not rational.
      I’ll give you a very personal example for this: My father died from cancer when I was one year and four months old and I hate him, because he just disappeared. That’s not rational in any way, because I’m sure he did not want to die, that he loved me and he was worried, what he was about to leave behind. But this anger in me is real, no matter if the reasons are not rational. Now I can face these feelings or I can build a wall against all kinds of emotions against the inside and the outside. Guess what I did and what many people do.
      Just look at Merkel and her cold facade. So cold, so cool, so absent, so distant. Yet inflicting so much hate, pain and disaster on a country. It’s her mind, her rotten fucked up mind expressing herself.

      In short: concern trolls are fucked up people, who express their fucked up minds. But they are fucked up for a reason. Add to that the averagely rather low IQ and you end up with a big big pile of bullshit.

      Hope that makes kind of sense.

    5. I should probably point out that the “many” comments accusing me or Alek as “being angry” are submitted by fewer IPs than pseudonyms, meaning that similar statements are made by people who create multiple identities. I had that suspicion back on Blogger. Now that I am on WordPress, I can see the IP address of commenters, which proves it.

    6. That would (especially in the case of your blog) indeed point to cowardly manipulative behaviour. Again, tragic.

    7. Lack of anger is not a sign of superior understanding nor vice versa.

      Commenter(s) lecturing Alek on personal growth imply they are wiser and able to judge yet I’ve never seen them write anything as insightful and noteworthy.

  9. I recall a few years ago, knowing how to “code” (e.g. Python, Ruby on Rails, etc.) started to become the in-demand skill. For example, schools would say coding was something to teach kids on par with learning arithmetic.

    Similarly, there was fervent calls and fury to get women into coding. So you get “Women in Tech” groups, women-only bootcamps for coding, etc.

    My question: I came across this post from a guy saying coding is not a great path to pursue.

    See post here: https://mavericktraveler.com/6-reasons-why-young-men-should-not-become-programmers/

    Thoughts?

    1. The article is pretty much bullshit. However, I do think that there is an enormous tech bubble at the moment, and a lot of programming jobs that have been in high demand for a while will disappear. This is based on the observation that there are still a lot of internet startups that do not solve any serious technical problems and don’t make much money. I think this will largely affect front-end web development, which is arguably the most amateurish part of the entire profession. Go check out Hacker News or r/programming — 80% of posters on there are morons.

  10. Aaron, do you mean “tech bubble” specifically in regard to app development and startups generally? In your opinion, will it last for a while yet (say a decade at least) or do we have much less time before it bursts?

    I am asking as a guy who has a science background, but with virtually no programming experience.

    1. I don’t think much of Keynes’ economic theories, but he said a few smart things, such as, “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” On that note, the tech bubble could burst this month, or in ten years. Just do some research on “unicorns”, i.e. companies valued at > $1bn, and then look up how many are privately owned, and how those evaluations were made. Then you may realize that there is a lot of betting on uncertain outcomes going on, and sometimes the vain hope of selling to a bigger fool. With regards to the latter, Twitter is a great example. They have been around for a decade, are not profitable, yet are somehow allegedly worth in excess of $10bn. On a much smaller scale, many “entrepreneurs” chase the dream of becoming the next unicorn. If you’re looking for work in that field, those people will tell you about the potentially “life-changing amount of money” the pithy amount of equity they promise you will eventually be worth. If you want a solid career in that field, then don’t chase after trends.

      You are a scientist? Then how on earth did you manage not to pick up at least basic programming skills along the way?

    2. That was great news! I got a few good laughs out of reading the typical SJW programmer watering holes like Hacker News where those spineless cucks claimed that we shouldn’t blame Marissa, and that her failure shows that nobody could have turned Yahoo! around.

  11. Well, I am soon completing my PhD in maths (I commented on another thread not long ago). And since maths is a part of “natural sciences”, I quite often tend to say that I have a science background, especially since my research is influenced by physics. Since all my research follows “theorem – proof” type structure, I only ever needed to resort to a program occasionally to check some numerical / symbolic manipulations.

    I guess programming was never something that particularly interested me – untill recently, anyway. I am picking up some basics in Python now though, since I am thinking of a possible career switch after a PhD. The opportunities in academia are simply very limited.

    I also know quite a few PhDs from other sciences (biology in particular) who haven’t done any real programming. From my experience, the people in “pure” sciences (so excluding engineering, materials science, etc) who are most likely to have a good knowledge of programming languages are found in either physics or applied maths / statistics departments – because they usually do plenty of computer simulations in their work…

    1. What kinds of roles are you thinking of?

      In Mathematics an academic career is, as far as I know, a easier to achieve than in many other disciplines. Evidence of this is that there are comparatively few postdoc positions available. Instead, you can immediately apply for an entry-level professor-type position, like Lecturer in the UK or Assistant Professor in the US. In the Life Sciences, you would normally need two postdocs to get to that point.

      Also, mathematics is pretty much at the top of academia and is widely regarded as a very difficult field. Sciences, in particular applied sciences, do not necessarily enjoy the same reputation. I meet quite a few maths PhDs professionally, and not one of them would introduce themselves with something like, “I have a science background”.

  12. The fact that “there are comparatively few postdoc positions ” is an indicator of the difficulty of pursuing a career as a maths researcher. Getting an “entry level professor type” position, especially in a highly-ranked institution, straight after a maths PhD is pretty much unheard of nowdays (if that was ever the case). It happens only if one is extremely talented and has a list of top-quality stellar publications already, preferably with support of a stellar academic advisor. My publications are decent, my maths department is one of the top ones in Europe, my advisor is a big player in his field, but so what? Many other PhDs have similar credentials, and the academic job market is simply oversaturated.

    Most of the Lecturer / Assistant Professor jobs apriori require at least a couple of years of research experience after a PhD – in other words, a postdoc. And the chances are that the position will be in some crap little town in the middle of nowhere, which is not what I am looking forward too – I am a big city kind of a guy. Given that I place a lot of emphasis on location, my options are already limited.

    I was thinking of transitioning into finance – “quant” roles, most likely. Of course they involve a lot of programming, plus they require different maths background (stochastic calculus and probability) to mine , so I on a back foot here.

    1. It seems I have not been clear enough. I wrote that it was comparatively easier, not that it was easy in absolute terms. The funnel in academia is only getting narrower the further you get, and brutally so. Still, the percentage of Maths PhDs doing postdocs is much lower than the percentage of Life Science PhDs. Across the board, though, postdocs are getting more common. There was a semi-recent study on academia in the US on that phenomenon. I couldn’t find it after a quick Google search, but it’s available online.

      There are people in a similar situation as you who do a specialized Master’s after getting their PhD. The MSc in Mathematical and Computational Finance at Oxford or the MFE at Baruch have a minority of PhD holders among their students, for instance.

    2. Your gonna be well paid in finance as a quant, even though you missed the train by at least 8 years, maybe even 12-15.
      Note though, that you are going to automate yourself away. Why? The potential to make the whole industry (including you masters of the universe) more efficient is enourmus AND it’s a necessary step, too, since costs NEED to go down after the completely disproportional bubble in finance the last 25 years. Again, don’t think you’re safe, just because you are the brain behind the computer brain. It’s a very straight forward simple stupid business model which is doomed for for an extended period of shrinkage. But you could still milk it. When I skim through job ads and see the ridiculous requirements for a job in Investment Banking I can only shake my head. These people should make the world better and not come up with yet some other gimmick to further make money out of money. Then again, if that’s the rules, so we shall play according to them, no morals here, that’s for the hippies. Just my two cents.

    3. You could always go into management consulting (BCG, McKinsey, Bain, etc.) if this type of work doesn’t bore you too much. They are always looking for math PhD’s.

  13. A little confused where you got token black out of the video.

    He got a 2250 on the SAT. That’s middle 50% at all ivy league schools, MIT and Stanford.

    It’s also strange why you think Michelle should be a welfare queen. There was minimal affirmative action when she went to Princeton. She was a salutatorian of her high school class, and was pushed not to apply to Princeton. If anything, Princeton is one of the more classist Ivy League schools.

    1. How many white guys had such an SAT score? How many white guys with that score got offers from all eight Ivies?

      Michelle Obama wrote a ludicrous thesis, which was essentially a reflection of what it’s like to study at Princeton if you are a black woman who doesn’t feel as if she belongs (because she doesn’t). Grammar and vocabulary are piss-poor. I have a hard time believing that her academic writing adequately reflects the level of the typical Princeton senior.

  14. Neutralthoughts,

    Would you classify high frequency / algorithmic trading as “automation”? Because that has existed for a while now.

    Yeah, it certainly is harder to get into that aspect of finance, compared to say 10 years ago. Nowdays I know some 20 year old undergrads who are testing out algorithms of their own devision based on Bayesian modelling and game theory, and applying these strategies successively to win money gambling in casinos etc.

    1. Would you classify high frequency / algorithmic trading as “automation”?

      Yes I do. I’m the last person to ask about IT stuff, but: since you can just buy and sell and since in essence it’s all “if-then”, you can consider it a quite simple process after all. You only have two parameters: price and time, hence the complexity is quite limited and you don’t have much space for expansion.

      “Because that has existed for a while now.” And what’s that supposed to mean? Bikes haven’t dissapeard because of cars. So if you’re implying that the mean mean algo traders are going to control the industry, forget about it. It’s gonna be a fairly peaceful co-existence, like it is now. They had to come, because technology made transactions more efficient and they will stay. But they are going to become more efficient, too and the margis are low already. Last thing I heard was some data cable replacement between London and NY. It’s I think a question of nanoseconds faster than the old one. Even if it’s miliseconds… you get the point: How much more? Not much.
      Besides, an algo is just another market particpiant and therefore a liquidity provider. I don’t care if it’s a program or someones grandmother on the other side of the trade. Just fill my order. The rest is my problem.

  15. I meant to say “of their own devising based on Bayesian modelling and game theory, and applying these strategies successfully to win money gambling in casinos etc”.

    Sorry for bad spelling. Been a long day.

  16. Alek what you said about the 1-20 level range is crazy enlighting to me. I am thinking back to the girls I banged this year and they all made these little moves on me, without me noticing. I have a question though: as I work in a bar in my college, all the chicks that are hanging around come to order stuff. Some are openly flirting with me and others are a little more subtle. But I am on the spotlight since I am the only one behind the bar. So my question is, how should I behave with a chick without appearing flirtatious to the other girls ? I figured out I am hitting on girls too hard and other girls become disinterested in me, or at least show way less interest.

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