alchemist
1yr ago
What if you don't think Black people are inferior, but the particular person in front of you, who happens to be black, is inferior?
alchemist
1yr ago
"Just about all sex difference correlate with gender equality"
I don't think that's close to right -- it's much too strong, but I admit I haven't seen a lot of data. What I have seen is consistent differences across multiple cultures:
Men and things, women and people: a meta-analysis of sex differences in interests
The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality
Note that the differences tend to be actually larger than many of these suggest at first glance, as there tend to multiple, at-least-partially-independent, so if you take multiple traits at once, the means move further apart.
Scott also has a great discussion on it in Contra Grant on Exaggerated Differences
alchemist
1yr ago
No, model 1 isn't "debunked" and shouting "phenotypic null hypothesis" isn't the argument winner you seem to think it is.
alchemist
1yr ago
Hey, I'm sorry you went through that.
We managed to be friends with both rabid vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, but it wasn't always easy. I even (gasp) played volleyball with some unvaccinated. They were fairly young and healthy, I was vaccinated and healthy. I don't share your anger at the mask mandates, but I see where it comes from after hearing how your own family treated you (especially given you'd had it, which was generally thought to be better than a vaccination, I thought).
I think something about the fear of death, and maybe plagues, triggered something deeply primal in a lot of people ("broke their brains") and we got a lot of extremism out of something that was comparatively mild (especially once a vaccine was available).
My first thought was that I agree with you. The second thought was that you can have a confidence in your confidence. My third thought was that that should baked into your primal estimation, and that if you're saying 80% +/- 20%, you're really saying something like 70%. Does it really make sense to be saying, hey, there's a chance I'm 99% sure, but it's only 10%??
These things really only make sense with repeated results anyway. A single event happens or it doesn't.
If you felt a real need to give more details on your prediction, I think it would be more interesting to give buckets, e.g. I expect the housing market to
5%: shrink > 15%
30%: shrink 5 - 15%
60%: stay flat, changing [-5, +5]
12%: grow 5 - 15%
3% grow > 15%
OTOH, thinking about this more (which makes me think that someone smarter and with more statistics has thought more about this), this still doesn't capture the idea of confidence. What if I don't know what a house is, and you ask me this? Can I really make any meaningful statement? I think I could say 50/50 grows or shrinks, or 90% doesn't change more than 95% (because few things do), but it's hard to capture what it means to have little certainty.
alchemist
1yr ago
Meh, FWIW, I think most of the Greens just resisted publicly to appease their base, but didn't really. Habeck has been running around arranging gas deals with UAE and Qatar, and Baerbock has been shipping weapons to the Ukraine, both of which would have been unthinkable for Green's just a year ago. He has scolded the public for wanting unrealistic energy solutions.
Apparently the issue was resolved in four minutes when the cabinet met; hardly the sign of firm opposition.
Perhaps I'm too optimistic, and the anti-nuclear segments are too strong, but I think the Greens have grown up somewhat, due to actually having power and having to deal with a crisis.
Also, the country is facing up to the fact that it's likely to be a tough winter -- many townships in Bavaria are putting out disaster preparedness advisories, warning of potential power and water outages.
alchemist
1yr ago
If you're talking Lost in Space (which fits), that daughter is actually adopted, and ends up meeting her father, who is black, so it works in-world quite well. It was weird at the beginning, I grant you.
RoP has no such excuses. I found it okay for the elf (in the army, people come from all over, and he was more elf-like than most of the community-theater-roman-senator elves anyway), but for the Harfoots it's very distracting and weird.
alchemist
1yr ago
Germany also has an immensely expensive healthcare system.
IIRC correctly, people visited doctors on average more than any other OECD country. I'm also shocked by how common, e.g. MRI devices are in Munich. In BC in Canada there are a few mobile ones that services the entire interior, and there are often month long waits for elective scans (too long, IMO, by the way). Near Munich I was able to get an MRI for my knee the next day.
So, there's at least some fat to be cut.
(In a further out there way, I think there's an unserviced niche of 'low-level' medical care -- basically advanced first aid clinics, where I wish we could have 'associate doctors' trained in 1/3 the time (basically advanced nurses) in clinics, as I think they could handle many 'standard' issues that GPs do (including taking blood for tests and administering vaccines. But that's a whole 'nother area)
alchemist
1yr ago
I know the feeling you mean, but, on the other hand, would have it been better if they'd just been spending more while they were still working, so had no savings, and now need to live frugally? You're basically punishing them (morally) for being financially prudent.
alchemist
1yr ago
I use uBlock Origins, which is very good for websites, I think, but doesn't seem to do anything for YouTube. Any recommendations?
alchemist
1yr ago
I'll just say I've known a number of excellent women programmers. My personal opinion is that the main issue is just different interests (and often other options). Research seems to support that (roughly, women are interested in people, men are interested in things), it's one of the most repeated findings with biggest effect sizes in psychology.
As to teaching CS, I can't really remember what worked well for me. My sense is to focus on solving problems, and building out the world of tools, knowledge, and techniques that allow you to solve larger and more complex problems. I think it's important to have something concrete to attach abstract things to when learning. But that's just a first thought.
alchemist
1yr ago
I very much doubt anyone in the head offices of Amazon or Sony or Disney is saying "Fuck next quarter's earnings, we need more diversity in this place, dammit!"
The thing is, I think they really are saying that, they just don't realize they are saying that. I'll skip RoP, because, while not great, I'd say it's also not awful (although it's trending downwards). Instead, look at Wheel of Time, which was a major shitshow, and one where the woke aspects really ruined the story. Isolated village where exceptional character stands out now looks like a NY subway stop. Central tenet of the entire magic system and primary plot point depends on differences between the magic of men and women, and they undermine that, claiming the dragon can be a woman. Some of the most noble characters are undermined so the women can look better.
It really really hurt that show, and I think it must have been somewhat clear it would.
It's probably too late now, but I'm pretty sure once upon a time I was on hiring committees at the same company, and you should have told that recruiter's manager (the recruiters are almost always TVCs, who only care about hitting their hiring targets) about that. They shouldn't waste yours and others' time, and they shouldn't be getting incompetent people hired.
I too have set my interviews / week to zero.
*edit: should -> shouldn't
alchemist
1yr ago
I always thought that was a great response to the women's soccer pay thing in the US. They're not playing the same sport, any more than the U15s are. The hard question would be "should the U15s be paid the same as the men?"
(Yes, I know that in the end they were actually getting paid more, AND they chose that model after rejecting the same contract as the men. Such a shit show of lies.)
alchemist
1yr ago
Doesn't that lead one to wonder: "How did the Patriarchy ever gain power?" Are men just better at organizing? Women were too nice? But doesn't that suggest general differences between men & women.
It's an incoherent (and inconsistent with science and trivial observation) viewpoint.
alchemist
1yr ago
I think there's truth to this -- I think Italy, which is another 'modern but antiquated & extreme gender roles' country has one of the lowest rates in Western Europe.
alchemist
11mo ago
While I'm not sure your exact proposal is the way, I do think inheritance taxes are both a good way to reduce inequality, and are also, honestly, democratic (even playing field). That said, they do go against human nature to give something to your kids, so I think you need to be careful. (Yes, I know trusts are a standard way to work around them; it seems like if this is known, a counter-play should be possible). I say this as someone intending to leave something (but not too much :D) to his kids.
Agreement on the expensive real estate. Also, especially anything more than a single home should be hit fairly hard, IMO.
alchemist
11mo ago
The short form for me (okay, happily married, not in the dating pool, but reasonably charismatic), is that you can't trust / believe what 95% of women say. The saying is "Ask a fisherman, not fish, how to catch fish".
Most women seem generally unwilling or unable to introspect when it comes to attraction, or feel they can't be honest about it. So they say the usual platitudes like "be yourself!" "don't try, it'll happen!" "don't try to treat me differently" "just be nice!". Hollywood is just awful.
I was a late bloomer. My success took off when I just started going for it -- leaning in for the kiss, just making things happen, taking things a step further. I admit, this is all a while ago, so it's possible it's all changed, but I think it's human nature, so I rather doubt it.
In terms of your "how much interest to show", I think the answer is, show interest -- you want this -- but don't be creepy, i.e. if she's not interested, no big deal, you'll move onto the next thing.
My take -- be genuinely interested in her, and make her feel special. Do interesting things, and be willing to be a bit traditionally masculine (be competent, show initiative, be strong).
Good luck -- modern dating seems like a messed-up, sad, confused scene. Try to straighten it, and not get sucked in by the bullshit that's been painted on top recently.
alchemist
11mo ago
I'm reasonably on the inside, and this does not seem to be the case. HR (and DEI) was hit harder than most other areas, for example.
alchemist
1yr ago
There are claims that men interrupt women more than vice versa. The only 'study' I know was a self-reported single write-up, and the person didn't control for power, e.g. that it's likely the boss interrupts the intern more than vice versa. Even though, in the study, the person who interrupted most was a female vice president.
alchemist
1yr ago
I would even find it okay to let current loans be dischargeable in bankruptcy. Maybe you could have some kind of federal support. Changing that incentive seems key to the whole extortion.
alchemist
1yr ago
Amen, brother. I just so don't give a shit. I realize that's a luxury that some don't have (gotta check that privilege), but where I live, there are no masks, no vaccine requirement, you can get one if you want. Yes, it was bad for a while, but they never actually forced it (except maybe for healthcare workers, which was something of an own-goal, and also reasonably understandable to me).
I think Covid broke people's brains in both direction (Bill Gates is implanting chips, and if you don't double-mask outdoors you want to kill my Grandma and give me long Covid).
alchemist
1yr ago
But can you believe what they say? In dating topics, the answer is usually "no," although I agree, I suspect men are over-estimating the attraction here.
This all seems a bit overdone to me. I'd say women and the left probably don't think that they are letting in primarily criminals, and even if they do let in a few, it's not their fault/they can fix them/it's because of their unfair environment. So they see themselves mainly as helping some poor oppressed folk, which to some degree they actually are.
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