The western world’s calibration on what it means to feel unsafe is so far out of whack that it’s often hard to take seriously.

Few people will care because only a few are capable of caring and the world keeps on turning.

Myself, my boss (former CEO) and current CEO strongly believe in the power and potential of in house engineering, in particular for spaces that “sound on paper” like solved problems. The efficiency and productivity gains from building exactly what you need is hard to quantify but has been proven in our business as indispensable and, we believe, a significant competitive advantage.

Of course, as others have mentioned, you need the right person to make this happen in your business. I would look for someone with proven startup and product development experience that you could ultimately see managing a small team. None of this is cheap but the ROI long term is likely justified given the issues you’ve outlined.

But I assume you know that so you must be asking, "Is there a situation where somebody can accurately understand the expected outcomes of any particular bet where the odds are against them winning and still come to the conclusion that taking the bet is rational?"

And one answer comes immediately to mind although I'm sure there are several: when I'm willing to lose for the entertainment value of having the chance to win and knowing that short term variance means I may in fact win.

Do you have one or two references for this I could take a look at?

I'm as wary of bias and mistakes in research as "the next person" but if they are measuring brain activity it gets more interesting. To establish that there isn't some validity to this experiment then one would have to show that the brain's reward center can respond while receiving a reward while playing a game but not respond when receiving a reward in a different "non-game" context.

If such research exists or it's been established as fact that this is true, that would seem like a glaring omission from this study. I'd be interested to see that.

Secondarily, you avoided addressing the race question entirely :) I'll assume it is safe to say there is some bias there as well then.

“Historically, many studies have involved the easiest people to recruit, who tend to be people who come from advantaged environments. If we don’t make efforts to recruit diverse pools of participants, we almost always end up with children and adults who come from high-income, high-education environments,” Gabrieli says. “Until recently, we did not realize that principles of brain development vary in relation to the environment in which one grows up, and there was very little evidence about the influence of SES.”

Without this very type of study one could mistakenly do exactly what you’re accusing them of doing. I also didn’t see race mentioned. I’d assume the opposite of your presumption i.e. that this finding would stand regardless of race.

California's government - federal electives, state and many local have been making decisions and putting in place policies that we are now seeing the consequences of.

The pandemic didn't create the problem - it poured gas on the fire. The elected officials of the last 30-40 years created the problem. The housing shortage is 100% a government created problem. The homeless "problem" is 100% a government created problem.

We don't have to solve these problems - we can continue on as we are which is likely because it is the path of least resistance (accountability is hard for people and governments). But let's be honest about why things are the way they are.

The author muddles the point by bringing this into the equation. The core, valid issue raised is monopoly power. Which will naturally be the end goal of any enterprise. It is governments job to bring reasonable power to bear to prevent monopolies. Ours is failing to do this due to crony capitalism - all of the benefits both sides of the political aisle reap by maintaining the status quo.

FWIW, here's my definition of a "hard" drug: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29028924

But to answer, I think the term is used colloquially all of the time and of course is open to interpretation.

I would suggest it has nothing to do with a drug's pharmacology or chemical structure but rather the degree to which a drug when taken in easily-consumed quantities can shape our perceptions of the world, the likelihood of negative externalities due to consumer behavior and the probability of becoming addicted to the drug.

A mixture of those things makes a drug "hard" in conversational language e.g. something that dramatically changes a persons perceptions, frequently has negative externalities and can cause addiction with short-term sustained use is a "hard drug". Like alcohol.

When addicted to such a drug, the negative externalities typically expand in scope and severity and if the use scales to a significant portion of the population would generally be regarded as an undesirable state for society to be in.