QuantumChaos

I found myself in a very similar situation. My solution was to get a job at a large company. It didn't help much with the making friends part, but I am happy now that I don't work alone. I would consider whether a startup is right for you at this time.

I agree, it seemed like he was driving at the idea that we shouldn't dismiss the way women were acting as wrong, but instead try to see the advantages of their approach. Even though he didn't say it like this, I imagine his thought process was that being overly aggressive in negotiations creates ill-will and hurts you in the long run. Maybe there are men out there who constantly ask for raises and would be better off if they didn't.

I hope men aren't discouraged by this.

90% of men are simply trying to avoid the entire issue as much as possible, because stuff like this happens all the time.

Yes they do have a choice. Their choices are more limited because they live in a poorer country. On the American companies, didn't you said I hear some companies actually get work done this way and are very happy with it, growing continuously without worrying about who does the tech; Not saying you're 100% wrong on outsource being a safe option for managers, but you really did say that American companies were happy with outsourcing.

If you apply basic microeconomics to this situation, it is actually very simple. The company makes Indian workers better off, American workers worse off, and American companies better off.

I don't really see the problem here. Indians are willing to work under these conditions, which honestly don't sound worse than the US. It sounds like even though they might shrink/grow teams at will, because the building has many teams, the risk for the individual is low. And you said that companies are happy with the work these teams do. So what is the problem?

This is nonsense. Various funds available to ordinary people, including pension funds, do invest in the hedge funds and private equity funds. If anyone were actively buying businesses and replacing people with capital equipment, it would be these groups.

I don't see how this rule helps me figure out the meaning of sama's actions. At least five people (including myself) in that thread interpreted his actions as indicating that mods would use tactics like this (presumably escalating) against people they perceived as trolls. However, I would be happy to hear that this was not the case, and this action was a random occurrence.

Without any clarification, I think that this sort of thing has a chilling effect on discussion. People will self-censor for fear of being subject to harassment, either by mods or other users.

I never implied that sama's actions were doxing. I would however, like to a clear statement from mods regarding actual doxing, whether by them or other users.

How is Can we have a publication named "The Forgotten Male Programmers Who Created Modern Tech" now?" harassment?

Seems like providing personal information of an individual who thought they were anonymous, and merely expressed an opinion, is more like harassment.

Well everyone here is as anonymous as they choose to be, apart from being outed by mods. Given that mods can ban any person with a click, I don't see any excuse for them punishing people by selectively providing their personal information.

The original post was >Can we have a publication named "The Forgotten Male Programmers Who Created Modern Tech" now?

Is this really the sort of thing that warrants violating a persons privacy over? If we are going to use "name and shame" surely it should be for things that are manifestly abusive, not expressing an opinion.

At a base level, as you can see in a lot of the replies, it comes down to "people believe that if they've been somewhere long enough, they now have a right to stay there as long as they like, and anything else is harsh and mean".

Even if i thought this was right, I doubt you can find an economic model that allows this to happen, and can survive long term (and as evidence i offer that, in the history of civilization, nobody has accomplished this).

Insurance against changes in housing prices might let people avoid the effects of gentrification much longer. Imagine a bond that pays the difference between the current average rental rate and some "strike price" $X (when this difference is positive).

Have to disagree with you there. Educated people tend to be well informed and hold sensible opinions on global warming, vaccination, and education (and often hold silly opinions on nutrition, even though there is a very strong incentive). Economics is unique as something where people disdain the mainstream.

One notable difference (you can see it in this thread) is that people assume economists are somehow different from other academics. That academics in general can be trusted, but economists are sellouts. What they miss is that there is no significant difference between Economics as a field, and other fields. They get paid slightly more, but otherwise the journals, professional organizations, tenure committees, etc. are exactly the same. There is literally no point where the capitalist comes along with bags of money for his obedient intellectual servants.

The real reason people don't accept the mainstream is that it is very dismal. It says that your revealed preference proves that you value a cup of coffee in every morning over the life of an African (since you could donate that money to life saving charities). It says that inequality can't be fully ironed out because some people are more productive than others. It says that there is no way to shuffle around interest rates, bank accounts, etc. and make everyone better off. It says that there is no easy way to make the world better, because the free market has already maxed out the easy gains.

Personally, I think that the best way to encourage people to be more open to the mainstream, is to tell the other side of the store. Economics is also uplifting. It says that when you work for a company, you are creating value, and that that value can and does help people other than yourself (through the tax system). I also believe that tech has very large positive externalities (especially once you understand that taking people's jobs isn't an externality). Finally, it enables people to embrace the positive, self-affirming aspects of Ayn Rand's philosophy, without going to extremes. I do feel guilty that I don't do more for the people who are worst off. But at least I can enjoy my money, and my life, without feeling guilty that I'm driving some artist out of the current trendy area.

The argument was that people should move to a cheaper city if being a Facebook bus driver can't support them.

But that doesn't imply that Facebook is forcing people to move cities. Facebook isn't altering the labor market by employing drivers at market rates.

I hope you'll agree that the frictions from moving arise from changes in cost of living (or in the labor market, which doesn't appear to be changing). If the change in the housing market is gradual enough, the frictions need not be very significant, since they are amortized over a longer period of time.

Labor markets are inefficient, that's the primary reason the field of "Labor Econoimcs" exists.

However, these inefficiencies do not explain why Facebook bus drivers make so little. Classical economics is sufficient for that.

You cannot simply point to frictions as a get-out-of-jail-free card from classical economics.

I think that when people argue against unions, they are usually implicitly arguing against the moral duty of the company to concede to the unions demands, or to allow the union to form (assuming they could legally prevent the union from forming). They are not arguing against the right of the union to try to achieve better wages or conditions, or arguing it is immoral to do so.

It is quite easy to be a principled proponent of free markets, no matter who they benefit in a particular instance. It is quite a stretch to say that anyone who claims to adhere to this principle is really an agent of the capitalists.

I rode the corporate buses, and underpaid or not, the drivers are highly professional. I wouldn't trust my life to a random fellow employee over a trained and experienced driver.

I appreciate you and DannyBee's comments. It is disheartening to me that basic economics is treated here as right wing propaganda. Mainstream economics won against all other theories academically. Yet many otherwise educated people are unaware of fundamentals such as the welfare theorems (or dismiss them out of hands with "muh frictions").

“You can’t legislate your way out of a red-hot housing market, but the Board of Supervisors is trying to mitigate the damage,” Ms. Wolf said. “This is a big problem. If you don’t care about poor people, you should care about tourism, which is our No. 1 industry. You have to have a service class, and they have to have somewhere to live. If we’re all white yuppies, we’re not so interesting.

The arguments against rent control aren't premised on not caring about poor people - they are based on not privileging those poor people who happen to live in San Francisco. Being poor has a whole range of potential negative consequences, and that's why we have things like welfare, progressive taxes, and EITC.

Also, rent control benefits a lot of people who aren't poor, for no obvious welfare reason.

Regarding the need for service workers, the market can deal with that: wages will increase if enough workers leave due to rent prices. The outcome will involve higher prices for those services, but according to the second welfare theorem, it will still be an efficient outcome (please look up the second welfare theorem if you are busy typing "efficient for who?").

On the cultural side, I can see the potential benefits from having a mix of different incomes in a city. But statements like if we’re all white yuppies, we’re not so interesting betrays a certain animus towards Whites.

Maybe the speed of light has changed, but your reasoning is completely wrong.

The big bang theory is based on solutions to the equations of General Relativity, the same equations that predict black holes. Since these equations do allow for the big bang theory (without any changes to the speed of light), your verbal argument must not properly capture the theory.

More info is here http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/... or just google "big bang black hole"

I think you've hit on something very fundamental here. When the government has well targeted interventions that achieve specific goals, this can be a good thing.

But the cumulative effect of many social interventions can give the government excessive power. Even beside purely political concerns, I think we have to ask whether we prefer the random hand dealt by nature, to a hand carefully chosen by the government.

Nate Silver gives a talk [1] describing how we could design cities to make people less "racist". If this was possible, it would represent an overtly political manipulation of the populace. Chemicals probably can't have such target effects, but they still raise the question of what rights the government has to manipulate people's behavior.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/nate_silver_on_race_and_politics

I think we need to balance the need for deception in some cases, against the fact that tricking/pranking people is fun, and makes you look cool. There is an inherent ego boost from making other people look stupid and foolish, and that applies as much to the Sokal hoax as this.

That said, there are some reasons why I would be more in favor of using deception in your example:

- Facebook doesn't claim to have mechanisms that prevent deception. It is an extension of social life, and people are already equipped to understand that other people might lie to them. Academia claims to be robust against deception, because of the impact that a single faked academic result could have.

- The purpose of a probe into academic deception would probably be to prove that the safeguards were inadequate. This research, on the other hand, is used as evidence that people are always being dishonest when they use Facebook. It is very bad evidence for this claim. I would object to submitting a fake paper, and using it as evidence that all academics are biased.

Selectively providing information is not equivalent to lying.

Ethics panels are important, but not the final word on what is right or wrong. If someone isn't defined to be an experimental subject, then the rules regarding deception are pretty lax.

In fact, your post exhibits exactly the supercilious attitude that I was complaining about. The article implied that any academic research was sufficient reason to engage in deception that would otherwise be unethical. Now you are saying that I cannot comment on the ethics of research because the ethics panel has already decided the matter.

EDIT: I assumed some sarcasm in your (deleted) post, and if I was wrong in assuming that, I apologize.

The reasons behind her actions, however, are noble: it was all part of a university project, in which she wanted to show how Facebook activity is not necessarily reflective of real life.

I don't think doing academic research is a carte-blanch to lie to people. One girl might do this sort of thing for the ego boost of appearing cool. But what about the ego boost academics get from pulling this kind of trick on other people.

Your post captures the problem much better than the linked article.

I would summarize the problem as being that the result is tautological, but the gloss of mathematics gives it the appearance of not being tautological.

If people said "diverse teams are better because people from different backgrounds are good at solving different kids of problems" then that would be accurate, but leave room for debate about whether then assumption is true. If they say "diverse teams are mathematically proven to be better", this would be inaccurate, but give great ammunition to argue that science supports progressive views.

This article is shallow and misleading.

Economists do indeed have models of perfect competition, and perfect monopoly. But these are not the only concepts that economics has. For example, the market for pharmaceuticals is competitive ex ante, but monopolistic ex post. Anyone can choose to put research into developing a drug. But having discovered a particular drug, they have a monopoly over it.

Even though the monopoly is bad ex post, the promise of a monopoly is needed as an incentive to engage in productive activity ex ante. The same applies even more to company's like Apple and Google who maintain their monopoly by creating a unique product.

So the article is completely wrong when it says "To an economist, every monopoly looks the same, whether it deviously eliminates rivals, secures a license from the state or innovates its way to the top. I'm not interested in illegal bullies or government favorites"

Every kind of monopoly looks the same ex post, but monopolies achieved through innovation and monopolies achieved through bribery or favoritism are completely different ex ante. The first kind of monopoly incentivizes inventing new things. The second kind incentivizes unproductive activity such as bribery.

Correlation vs causation is not actually a complex mathematical problem. The issue is more philosophical.

Bayesian networks are a highly sophisticated and flexible framework for thinking about causation. And yet the essence of Bayesian networks can be captured in much simpler methods like Instrumental Variables or simply regressions with controls.

In all cases, the true distribution of observables (which we can estimate from samples) combined with some assumptions about the possible nature of causality (either very sophisticated in the case of Bayesian networks, or very simple in the case of instrumental variables) lead to the actual causal relationships.

Where do these assumptions come from? Consider a randomized trial. Even though physically, it is possible that some hidden cause influenced both the random number generator which selected patients into a trial, and also whether patients will get better. And yet people universally believe that there is no such mechanism, and so they believe that randomized trials prove the causal relationship between taking a drug and getting better.

No physicist ever wrote down an equation proving this. It is simply something we deduced from our human understanding of how nature works.

Put simply, causality is not a physical notion, neither is it a statistical notion. It is a part of our intuitive understanding of the physical world, in which a higher level notion of causality exists, beyond that described by special relativity.

Racism is a politically loaded term, and it's not possible to use it out of the context of a progressive viewpoint that defines racism to be a culture of White supremacy. In this context, the author is assuming that Black women are as beautiful as Hispanic and White women, but that the racism that pervades our culture causes them to view Black features as unattractive.

oh ok, two separate issue then I guess.

At the risk of being boring, Amazon's "no profit" model works because profit is an accounting measure, not an economic measure.

Amazon is increasing in value, but because they are investing in themselves, on paper (i.e. according to accounting measures) they are not profitable.

All companies have a "book to market" ratio that indicates they are worth more as a company than accounting measures would suggest.

You've contradicted yourself there. If Amazon's stock price is doing well, this is evidence that they are creating value for shareholders.