wlxd
2yr ago
This is probably the lousiest attempt at making an argument that I have seen here. The only way you could have made it worse is if you waved a credential.
wlxd
2yr ago
What about purging people like Turkheimer, who explicitly put their ideology above science? Are you giving them a pass, and instead prefer to focus on those who inappropriately address your methodological pet concern?
Look, to me, you seem to be more interested in purging people and silencing the discussion, instead of in using science to learn about reality and have these learning inform our behavior and policy. You can’t even provide any example why your pet concern is relevant for me at all! I think you are wasting everyone’s time, and I think this behavior should be purged from the discussions. If you don’t like your pet concern being ignored, you should make sure to understand it.
wlxd
2yr ago
I am not asking you how things morally ought to be. What I am asking you is to provide an example of a peril that awaits HBDers if they ignore your pet concern. Is there any?
You need to understand that for me and many people, the entire point of research in this (and many other) area is to guide our real world behavior, policy making, and to answer questions like “if we want to achieve X, will doing Y work? If not, what will?”. Can you provide any non artificial example of a scenario where naively taking heritability as representing “direct biological” (whatever one understands by that) casual mechanism, will lead us to substantially different policy than when one observes that genes only actually act through phenotype, and it’s the phenotype that interacts with the real world?
wlxd
2yr ago
But so what if it is due to people treating you phenotypically? This is still genetic causation. It might indeed be interesting to some to figure out exactly through what mechanisms differences in genes result differences in income, but how exactly is this relevant for our ability to predict real world outcome of our policies? Can you show one example where “naive” (according to you) HBD would get some real world application seriously wrong, compared to approach informed by your phenotypic casual pathway correction?
wlxd
2yr ago
There is also one thing I forgot to mention: that promo to senior in 2-3 years? You can get it tomorrow if you switch companies, a nice diagonal promotion. Happened to me and many people I know.
wlxd
2yr ago
Consider this: your comp went down, because of a double whammy of cliff and stock market crash. You should now be in a steady state, with each annual refresher replacing the previous expiring one. You expect your compensation to go back up, because you expect the stock market to come back up. But that means that you will make much more if you switch companies now. Here is why:
When you were getting refreshers for past 4 years, the amount was determined by assigning some cash value to it, and then dividing by the current (at the time) stock price to get the number of shares. For example, if you were making $140k in base, and the company wanted you to make $160k a year in stock. Assume the stock price is $100. In a steady state, you have stock vesting from four refreshers, so each refresher should provide a quarter of $160k, ie $40k. Thus, they take $40k, multiply by four year to get the total value over four years to get $160k, and then divide by stock price of $100 to get 1600 stock units as a refresher size.
Now, in the steady state, if the stock suddenly jumps from $100 to $200, your comp is now $140k + 2*$160k = $460k, so you’re happy. However, your next refresher will be only 800 stock units. Conversely, if stock falls to $50, your total comp falls to $220k, but next refresher is 3200 units. The point is that if the new stock price is stable, in the next 4 years, your total comp will converge back to $300k, with $160k in stock.
Now here is a thing: if you switch companies right now, your total comp should converge to $300k immediately, because with the big new hire grant you’ll be obtaining, you’ll compress 4 years of refreshers into it. Moreover, if the stock goes back up slowly over time, the new hire grant will be worth more than 4 refreshers, because it will entirely be granted based on the bottom stock price, while the refreshers will be granted at consecutively increasing stock prices.
This also means, by the way, that your current company will likely offer extra out-of-cycle grants to good performers in order to retain them, so that they don’t simply jump ship. They will not announce it publicly, but if you ask for it privately, you might just get it. I recommend first getting a competing offer though.
wlxd
2yr ago
NYC is disgusting. The subway is dirty, and it smells bad. The sidewalks are dirty with the effluents of the trash bags left right outside, without even putting them in any kind of bins or containers. Americans are, as a general rule, dressed and groomed like slobs by European standards (not to mention high frequency of obesity, which is disgusting in and of itself), but in the busy places of the metros, you additionally have a lot of hobos and crazies, behaving erratically and generally presenting disgusting sight.
New York City is probably one of the worst places to tout as a high example of classy first world. It does have a lot going for this, and, to be fair, is much nicer inside the buildings than at the street level, but clean and nice it ain’t.
wlxd
2yr ago
Comparing this to total revenue does not make much sense. Instead, you need to look at the profit margin on this incremental revenue.
How much extra does it cost to run this paid checkmark scheme vs not running it? If, for example, operating margin of this individual program is, say, 50% (and this is in my mind underestimate, given that they already implemented the check feature, and the anti spam and prioritizing feature is extension of the rating and recommendation system they already built anyway), that $400M in revenue is $200M in additional profit, which would increase their operating profit by something like 80%. That’s a huge increase in profit on equity.
One must always be thinking in the marginal terms. Given your finance background, I was rather surprised by your comment.
wlxd
2yr ago
Yes, I did not mean to imply that the current doctrine is incoherent or is standing on the shaky basis (as did, for example, Roe v Wade decision, or still does most of the federal regulatory apparatus based on the unintended interpretation of interstate commerce clause). My point was simply that separation of church and state, contrary to what many people seem to believe, has not been one of the founding principle of this country, and in many states, quite the contrary.
wlxd
2yr ago
Does this course of action sound like something that happened in the real world?
I recommend watching some videos from this channel, which contain mostly body or dashcam videos of police officers interacting with criminals. You'll find that the criminals often behave completely bizarrely, making completely absurd decisions and incoherent actions, and cops just chilling, seconds before events turn violent.
For example, in this video, you get to observe an actual hammer attack. You see some people chatting with the driver, then they come up to the arriving officer, telling him that they guy is likely drunk. The cop engages the driver, cheerily asking him for papers, when the guy bizarrely, for no reason at all, pulls out a hammer and brings it to a gunfight.
I recommend watching more videos from this channel. Behaviors of the criminal underclass are often completely bizarre and strategically idiotic. You are assuming much more rationality than the drunks, crazies and morons actually can scrape together in the moment. The argument that "it doesn't make sense to do it" simply does not carry much weight.
wlxd
2yr ago
The US had this fight over prayer in schools, etc. It was thoroughly resolved in favor of separating church and state.
This is, by the way, one of those decisions that would seem completely absurd to the founders of the country. They very much did not believe that US constitution demanded separation of church and state (even if they personally believed it would be desirable). For example, when the US Constitution was passed, Massachusetts literally had state religion. From Massachusetts constitution of 1780:
Art. III. As the happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality, and as these cannot be generally diffcused through a community but by the institution of the public worship of God and of the public instructions in piety, religion, and morality: Therefore, To promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies-politic or religious societies to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily.
Not only requiring prayer in school was allowed in Massachusetts, in fact in 1791 Massachusetts passed a law that literally required Sunday church attendance (to be fair, this was never enforced). There was really no question about the constitutionality of this: at the time, the bill of rights was understood to apply mostly to federal, not state governments. The current jurisprudence is very much dependent on 14th amendment, and the incorporation doctrine.
wlxd
2yr ago
If Musk unbans Trump, but Trumps ignores Twitter, that will reduce Musk's and Twitter's status.
This "fetish for hobos" theory does not sound entirely absurd and incoherent, especially considering the examples you give, but...
The basis of the escort theory is, essentially: How did he get into the house? How does a house owned by one of the richest couples in America in one the most crime-ridden cities in America, not have a security system that can defend against a lone crazy person making a semi-spontaneous attack?
I mean, does "Paul Pelosi has a fetish for gay hobos" is really the first thing that comes to your mind given this evidence? Is this really simplest theory filling available facts?
Look, I'll propose something much simpler: DePape ringed the bell, someone (maybe even mister Pelosi) answered the door, and DePape said something that was misinterpreted, resulting in the person letting him in, thinking that he was expected. It could have even been something as simple as him saying "hey, I have something for Nancy". Does that really sound less plausible than "Paul Pelosi has a secret fetish for gay hobos"? Or, check this out: DePape rings the bell, Pelosi answers the door, and DePape just shoves the octogenarian and barges in? I'm not saying that either of those is what actually happened, but that these are simply way more a priori plausible than the "fetish for gay hobos" theory, they depend on fewer assumptions and inferential steps.
wlxd
2yr ago
You might not know to pay less taxes now, but if you actually cared to learn, you’d start out with some obvious steps, like, for example, asking people who you think might have better idea than you do. Rich people typically are good at figuring out how to get things done, as this is typically how they got rich in the first place. Your last line about “the level of fantasy” is bad, and you should be able to do better than that.
wlxd
2yr ago
While I agree that there is some strangeness about the entire story, I think the “gay escort” theory is highly unlikely, for the very simple reason: people like Pelosis can afford and procure services of higher quality providers than crazy hobos.
wlxd
2yr ago
Your understanding of Margaret Hamilton’s role in Apollo program is still closer to what activists want you to believe instead of actual truth.
She was a lead of a team that wrote the Apollo lander program, this much is true. What is less commonly known is that she joined that team as the most junior member, and only became a lead after the code had already been written, and the actual leads (whose names, ironically, basically nobody knows today) have moved on to more important projects.
wlxd
2yr ago
Zero chance I ever particpate in this forum again while Naraburns is a moderator.
wtf I love naraburns now
(just kidding, just kidding, I always liked naraburns)
wlxd
2yr ago
Basically none of the moderators are actual Twitter employees. These companies also employ an army of contractors. When you hear that Google employs 150 000 people, you need to understand that this figure only include full time employees that are directly employed by Google. When you add in temps, vendors and contractors, the figure probably exceeds 500 000.
wlxd
2yr ago
Sure, Google won’t hire total idiots. At the same time, they do not have very high bar these days: otherwise they wouldn’t be able to hire quarter million of people over past 15 years.
(I worked there myself for ~5 years, and saw many changes over time first hand)
That if you think they don't deserve the treatment they're receiving, your problem is with how we deal with criminal suspects in general.
I find your suggestion that they get the same treatment as common criminals to be rather ludicrous, and I do not believe that you are making it in a good faith.
The criminal justice system did not treat the George Floyd rioters in the same manner, that is, by attempting to catch every single last one of them and keeping them in pretrial detention for months or years. Instead, George Floyd rioters were allowed to run mostly scot-free, and only a handful of the absolute worst ones faced any consequences at all. In the "100 days of Portland", for example, the handful of rioters that did end up getting arrested, was immediately released and often rearrested next night, rinse and repeat.
In fact, I wouldn't have minded much how the Jan 6th rioters are treated if BLM rioters were treated the same (in fact I suggested that we do exactly that at the time, the Jan 6th treatment is another good example along the Waco one I brought up that stopping riots is definitely doable when proper methods are used). The problem here is that you are asking me to play along the rules of the game, while your side of the "criminal justice reform" argument is rigging the game to punish my side and benefit theirs. I reject that.
wlxd
2yr ago
Well, yes, indeed I believe that upstanding citizens shouldn’t suffer the same condition as criminals, who should experience bad conditions in order to deter them from doing crime. Not sure what your point is, that I should lobby for improved conditions in jails so that political prisoners of my side have better time there? No, I’d rather the other side stop taking political prisoners.
One typically compares outcomes of identical twins vs. fraternal twins (who are as related to each other as regular siblings). If the correlation between identical twins is the same as correlation between fraternal twins, it means that it’s probably not genes that are causing the outcomes. If, instead, outcomes of identical twins are more highly correlated than outcomes of fraternal twins, that suggests that the casuality is genetic. This is because both fraternal and identical twins are sharing the same home environment (of, say, middle class home with two parents), so if it was the shared environment that was causing all of the outcomes, you wouldn’t expect the correlation between outcomes of identical twins to be different than that of fraternal twins.
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