betascience
2yr ago
I can completely understand the distaste with which the forgiveness is seen by many people, and I'm not certain that it is ideal. However, the fact that we allow young people to take on debt that is not dischargeable by bankruptcy is unconscionable to me. This is abhorrent, and essentially every religion forbids it.
And this is the true crux of the issue. The entire problem of the student loan program is built on the twin perverse incentives of the loans being non-dischargeable and guaranteed by the government. This has allowed state schools to balloon beyond their original missions and expand into administrative behemoths. It's created an industry of for-profit universities whose customers pay nothing out of pocket but are burdened with non-dischargeable debt in the hopes of improving their lot in life. It's put a millstone around the necks of young people and become one more thing people need to do before having children -- finish college, get a job, pay off loans, buy a house. I also believe it has been the essential driver of wokeism. It's been used to create and fund environments where ideas are sheltered from contact with reality and need to produce no cash value beyond seeming like a good place for students to cash their government checks. It simply cannot continue like this.
betascience
1yr ago
There's a nigh infinite number of ways to approach this. I would recommend perhaps starting at the beginning of the fabulous Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast (https://shwep.net/). Christianity did not evolve in a vacuum. It's a part of western thought with roots dating back to pre-Socratic philosophy. It may benefit you to have a more complete picture of how it came to be and the issues that early Christian thinkers like Origen and Augustine wrestled with. There are as many different Christianities as there are Christians, and there is almost certainly a Christian path that is true for you.
betascience
2yr ago
Well we have no examples state educational interventions correcting IQs and test scores and have numerous examples of at least allowing a certain social contagion to convince (some small number of) people to cut off their genitals. But most trans-trenders don't bother with that.
But what you're saying is over-simplistic. There are plenty of easily conceivable models that could consider things like IQ, ambition, height, disagreeability, openness or a number of other traits including potentially the curiosity to want to toy with the idea of genital mutilation to be highly inherited and yet the expression of those to be highly regulated by environment. If every modern trans would have been trans-curious in other cultural environments but gone on to mostly grow out of it and live happy lives that doesn't mean that the modern environment where they're rushed onto puberty blockers is strictly better. In fact that proclivity may have had some advantage only in environments where it wouldn't be indulged.
Obviously if it is indulged it will likely breed itself out of existence.
betascience
2yr ago
Is "should" just a normative statement? Who decides what's fair and modest? Are you in a better decision to decide than the person who wants to purchase the software? Software needs to be cheap enough that the purchaser's are getting marginal value from it and the margin's must be low enough to keep a barrier to other entrants (your margin is my opportunity).
I think you have a moral sense that the cost of software is unfair, and I don't really know what to say about that. I'm not going to tell you that you don't or can't feel that way. But, you asked for some explanations for the cost of software and I provided some considerations as to why the current pricings are stable.
betascience
1yr ago
In my experience very good student athletics are slightly smarter than the average of their peer group. Most athletic performance benefits from intelligence, whether it's anticipating the path of a ball in flight or predicting an opponents' next move. Being stupid is at the very least limiting, and for some positions and games it's disqualifying.
betascience
1yr ago
I think the excessive fat storage is because your metabolism has been broken by industrialized food. If you were to repair it, your experience would be different.
betascience
2yr ago
You've hit the nail on the head. The perverse incentives comes from the combination of the loan not being dischargeable by bankruptcy and the government guaranteeing it. Without those, lenders would have be diligent about to whom they loaned and how much. It wouldn't matter if the university wants to do away with the SAT or ACT because the lender would require it. How we would move to a system like this is nearly unimaginable to me at this point with all of the vested interests feeding off of the tit of the student loan program, but I feel we're at an inflection point where something must be done.
betascience
2yr ago
Presumably for the same reasons you don’t currently commit tax fraud.
I’ve thought about this a bit and my initial response was probably like everyone else’s. These would be things like:
- Don’t you care about diversity? We’re robbing our students by not having diverse classes.
But that is the legal argument and most of them don’t actually realize that.
- Some appeal to affirmative action as a correction of prior injustice.
Sure, I think this is closer to what they actually believe, but it’s not knee jerk enough for internet hate. They would want to say something nastier.
So my guess that it’s probably something both stupid and nasty. I’ll go with “something racist about Asians.”
Huge whiff
Most of them are either Asians expressing the unfairness of the current system or people saying that race-based programs should be replaced with socio-economic based programs.
betascience
2yr ago
What are you trying to get into? Data Science in general is very gatekept by formal education and you'll be competing with PhDs for most positions. It doesn't help that the job title is seen as very hot so any opening gets flooded by resumes. That said, it's not very entry level friendly and if you know a particular domain really well and are good at design and communication you can get a leg up that way. Also stats nerds are really bad at programming, so you will likely have an advantage there.
betascience
1yr ago
I got a medical exam before 1st grade tee-ball. I don't think anyone was doing bloodwork, but they probably took temperature, bp, and maybe some fellas had to turn their head to the side and cough.
betascience
2yr ago
trying to force everyone into a vaccine was a huge risk management error. a reasonable approach would have been to try to guide the outcome towards 25% rate for each of the three approved vaccines and 25% unvaccinated rate (especially in low-risk populations). vaccinating children was pointless, all risk, no upside.
betascience
1yr ago
Are they basing the poverty rates on a national income cutoff rather than a local cost of living standard? I bet dollars to donuts they are, and until that's corrected for, I don't know why I'd waste additional time entertaining the argument.
betascience
2yr ago
There’s far less legal ground for this than there is for student loan forgiveness. At least with regards to loan forgiveness you have the executive of the actual agency that holds the debt taking tan action that is by definition legal (if the courts say so).
The universities more or less deliver what they promise. They’re accredited to the standards of the various regional accrediting boards, and if a person attends they will receive education at that low standard.
The big issue is the lending program itself which incentivized enrolling and matriculating as many students in possible for access to the money. The government created this by incentivizing it.
betascience
1yr ago
I don’t fully understand what you’re proposing here. It doesn’t sound like a better situation for anyone involved. Is this actually two states occupying the same territory with international militaries policing it? How could this possibly be better than the present situation?
betascience
1yr ago
The idea of stealing and the system that disallows it are just social technologies and systems that are agreed upon prior. "Don't steal and that's the law" isn't different in principle from "young people have to support old people and that's the law." In fact, both are pretty straightforwardly Biblical.
Ownership relies on violence which means it's not coercive only by some means of special pleading, which you make pretty explicit by hinting that it's not coercive because you prefer to live in a world that includes it. That's fine for what it's worth, but recognize it more forthrightly. It is coercive, just a type that you specifically prefer.
betascience
1yr ago
If the government ever touches the money allocated for social security.
It's actually mandated by the program that they do. It purchases treasuries. What would you have them do with it?
betascience
1yr ago
I think that all of Godot is ultimately interpreted whether you're using C# or Gscript. So if the thing that I think is correct, then yes. But I'm not certain what's going on under the hood.
betascience
1yr ago
Godot's Gscript is pretty well documented and easy to learn. You'll probably find it preferable as it's what most of the community uses. Also Godot is incredibly lightweight and older machine friendly, so you'll probably find it a very good fit.
betascience
2yr ago
You got a few answers and they are all on point. It’s very broad and under defined and can mean anything from building dashboards to building data pipelines to building ML models to just being an analyst.
The standard definition is that data scientists combine math/statistics, programming, and knowledge of a business domain to use data for solving business problems. One of the key pieces of the tool kit are machine learning models which are at their heart statistical tools.
betascience
2yr ago
Traditionally class is about wealth and not having to work. By European standards that programmer is quite correct. In Europe class is about wealth and status where the status comes from not needing to do labor. In the US we are far more concerned with income and having a high status profession where the status comes from the work's social importance or implied intellectual capability. So the two systems don't neatly map onto each other.
betascience
1yr ago
It's only strong for certain types of activities. Simple reaction time like someone throwing something at you which you bat away, it's almost nothing. Strategizing or problem solving, it's quite high. Defensive linemen probably have some of both. I'm sure it's way better to be smart than not, but much of it is using techniques and tactics on which you've drilled against techniques and tactics on which you've also drilled.
betascience
2yr ago
Fair. Rocks being conscious or at least representing something that is was more or less a default for belief in many cultures across time. Ruling it out so casually is a result of a particular unique, historically rare socialization.
betascience
2yr ago
I’m just thinking it through out loud.
My family has a lot of mental illness of the OCD and bipolar type, and those family members insist this is a well understood science and then make claims that seem essentially religious. I’m feeling out the edges of where measurable physiological issue versus vague “chemical imbalance?” meet.
Slightly aside from this, is there even such a thing as a biologically defined mental illness? Is there a single mental illness that’s diagnosed with a blood test or some other empirical measurement that doesn’t involve a checklist of symptoms that the patient describes to the physician?
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