betascience
1yr ago
Most arguments in the US have some variant of this. The obese mother of 3 who is "choosing between eating and paying the electric bill"... To me she's suffering from hypermacronutrition. To the NYT? Food insecurity.
If the straightforward issue such as hunger or poverty isn't true they make up an alternative, meaningless term.
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
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
1yr 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
One thing to consider is the capture caused by network effects and interoperability. You need to use Microsoft PowerPoint because your interns know it, your clients expect it, all your old presentations are in .pptx format, etc. Sure, you may be willing to consider some alternative in theory, but someone would need to produce a competitor that is nearly 100% compatible with all of your other stuff and compete at price point that is incredibly compelling. Are you going to do it?
Another thing to consider is that there is such a thing as "value" to capture and companies are thinking about how to bring their core competencies to market while outsourcing everything else. They need an off-the-shelf product to do something that isn't their core competency and they will take the best one on the market at the time at whatever price they need to pay so long as it doesn't upset their price structure and bring their costs out of line with their strategy. An armchair philosopher can ponder for years where value and cost comes from, but if I can spend one dollar to make ten then I'm going to do it whether the thing I bought for a dollar is theoretically worth it or not.
betascience
1yr ago
Posting the video to the internet is acting maliciously. No reason to do it except to socially attack the victim.
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
The whole question is pretty philosophically precarious. I don't know how I'd feel about trans people in a world where they were mentally healthy, lived normal life spans, and didn't tend to die young due to overmedicalization and the outcomes of their suicidality and other dangerous mental health issues. I live in the world where most "trans" people who make it to twenty without going on hormonal treatment just return "normalcy". My current biases say that the hypothetical you draw is statistically impossible, and I wouldn't trust the person offering the bargain.
betascience
2yr ago
If your child was drafted to a war and came back with his genitals blown off and a condition requiring life long medical treatment that results in a drastically shortened lifespan it isn't fair to say he's dead, but he's certainly well on his way. Whatever life you shared before is over and new vista of terrifying possibilities has opened its stead.
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
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
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
2yr ago
I’m not seeing the “verb” version as a verb. Use it in a sentence.
betascience
2yr ago
How so? I’d really like to understand the logic of this position.
betascience
2yr ago
Calling a series of factual statements a “gish gallop” is basically telling on yourself. There’s no argument here, but you’re admitting the conclusion you would draw is uncomfortable ergo assuming bad intentions.
betascience
2yr ago
I don't think one has to think car-centric sprawl is the peak of human existence to think it's a pleasant way to live that many people enjoy. People vote with their feet and their wallets and the outlying, sprawlier communities with more square feet and bigger lots do very well and if that means a half hour commute instead of biking 5 minutes to work, young families seem fine with that. I love my little suburb. I have generally everything I need within a 10 minute drive. I have a cute house in a quiet cul-de-sac that backs up to a wooded area. I have just down the street access to 20 mile trail along a beautiful stream. I have just down another street access to 10 acre dog park.
I can perfectly well understand that people can value different things and for some people access to walkable downtown neighborhoods with night life may be appealing. I'll take the weekly trip to the grocery store, the station wagon with heated seats, and the view of the woods from my back porch.
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
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
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
2yr ago
What is “sentient thought” in this case? Like… thinking the words out loud step by step? That’s useful and really powerful but smart people also have valuable flashes of insight where they skip from a to d bypassing b and c entirely.
Is someone faking their way through a last minute work meeting while they think about what they want to eat for dinner doing sentient thought? Someone daydreaming about the new girl at work while they drive on autopilot?
betascience
2yr ago
It doesn’t matter how the model works if you don’t know how consciousness works. You can get a pretty good gist of transformers and attention on youtube. But you can’t find anyone who can definitively tell you how consciousness works to ensure that this isn’t it or something very much like it.
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
Well…. now you’re getting somewhere.
betascience
2yr ago
Presumably for the same reasons you don’t currently commit tax fraud.
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.
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