mishellaneous

couldn't this argument could be made against a lot of scientific research? i bet it took a long time for the average consumer to benefit from the discovery of the double helix structure of the DNA.

and the government funds that kind of stuff even. so what's wrong with a private person doing it?

The number of Medicare funded residency slots are limited by law.

why don't hospitals fund residencies themselves? from what i hear, residents are poorly paid (they make less than nurses) and work long hours (almost like they "reside" in the hospital). i bet they even make money to the hospital.

what's more, when you look at what people pay for healthcare in the USA, money to train residents is peanuts. it'd even make economic sense for people themselves to pool money together and fund residents which would then take care of them as an "alternative" to insurance.

dangit, some time ago it seemed like every week there was another ridiculous study claiming another absurd benefit from these new weight loss drugs, but this one takes the cake.

the real surprise is that this comes from a Harvard professor of economics. i didn't have a high regard for the social sciences already, but i didn't know fancy universities pulled this crap too. yikes.

whoa, TIL. i knew that it made orgasms impossible when using, but i had never heard that the effects could last so long.

i think instead of asking the best way of dividing the costs, we should ask why does it cost so much. we've managed to bring down immensely the cost of technology over the past decades everywhere else.

It just is? I used to get notifications that said something like “$partner is likely to be irritable for the next 2 days”, so I could be extra careful not to piss her off.

to be clear, you think getting a notification about an incoming period is more convenient than being directly told about it? even considering you'll probably already be speaking to this person during this period (otherwise the notification is pointless)?

that barely makes sense even in the strict interpretation where it means that it takes less key presses to enter your period information on an app than typing "i'm on my period" every month (though i doubt you can beat typing "pms").

No way you can get someone to tell you that unprompted.

and you can get people to, connect/sync with you or whatever, on yet another app, made strictly for this purpose, unprompted?

Now, of course I would prefer if that data was end-to-end encrypted.

but the important question is the intensity of this preferrence. clearly, it's not as strong as your preferrence for... one key press less per month?

how is that saying? if one key press less per month is all it takes for you to give up private information, then i have a bridge to sell to you.

Sharing with your partner is a big one.

how is that even 10% more convenient than simply speaking? nevermind being worth giving away private data.

i agree that wisdom / an independent thinking spirit is an important factor to prevent manipulation and that it's not something easily taught.

but i also believe that in fact knowledge is another very important factor in resisting manipulation (absent from your list), and more generally, being part of a functioning democracy. i mean here knowledge of lofty things like history, economics, sociology, which can then serve as a base to know and understand more practical things, like laws, regulations, taxes, government subsidies, or how roads, schools, or health insurance is funded -- otherwise how could anyone make any decision regarding these topics? and all of these things can be taught.

independent thinking is important but with zero knowledge you could maybe be convinced to join a cult or something, for example. like, for ancient peasants the king was effectively a god anyway.

of course, all of this is highly idealized. i agree with you and Uncle Ted. academia, in practice, often is not a place that champions these ideals. but maybe it could be.

Sadly, the Western world I (we?) belong to has almost finished removing teaching of DIY and even the individual ability to do so

yeah, i fear these developments

if things pay off anyway, why should should tax payers fund it?

i believe the idea is that when someone is educated, it's not themselves alone that benefits from it, but rather everyone else around them. thus the interest in funding the education of other people.

What if it takes decades or centuries to pay off for society and perhaps never for the individual (in strictly monetary terms)? How should these things be funded?

i'd look into how other things having such characteristics are funded. for example, research. a lot of research is indeed funded by companies because even though, say, "the cure for cancer" may be 40 years into the future, they do make money off of the incremental improvements along the way. what about more fundamental research? like, particle physics. or, whoever funded the research that led to the discovery of the structure of DNA, what were they thinking? i haven't read a lot about it actually, but i get the idea that they were simply some forward/long-term thinking people.

... overall, i think these are good questions. the kind of questions people with a (ideal) humanities education should be more capable of answering (mine is lacking...)

another possibility to combat grifting would be to have competition. another university comes up and provides the same service as the wasteful university at a smaller cost, and thus displaces the wasteful university. the advantage is that we don't need performance measurements and similar things that can create distorted interests / be gamed (just like the proposed profit limit). that's the theory, at least

i like your framing of "holes" in political systems. one way to put it is that a political system has "holes" if the ideal/desired outcome is not a Nash equilibrium.

however, my understanding (though i can't speak for the other commenters) is that the reasoning behind "humanities-educated people make better democracies" is NOT that humanities-educated people are more virtuous, and thus will willingly not degrade the commons (the reasoning you seem to be criticizing). rather, it's that humanities-educated people cannot be manipulated as easily by a demagogue (and other similar things).

the usually cited problem with democracy is that it gives the people the power to choose, but it does not automatically makes them capable to make good choices. that's where the education comes in.

clearly many questions require technical/domain knowledge to be answered and are not simply a matter of preference. for example, fixing your car, or building a bridge. and even running a business or cooking an elaborate meal. with technical knowledge, you are able to make better decisions whatever your preferences are. humanities education is then implied to be the "technical knowledge" for participating in society.

of course, in that case, we can discuss what should be the content of the "humanities education", but that's another discussion...

this is a good point.

It seems more fruitful to approach things from the perspective of monopolies, competition, corporate governance etc in general

where to go to learn more about these topics?

i guess in that case the question would be if one should be as worried about the biological effects of PFAS as much as these two other forever chemicals you cite

for me, the moral of the story is that it's easier to promise things than to deliver them. or, engineering was the bottleneck. in my experience, this is not particular to start-ups, or even software engineering.

why does this happen though? i think it could be due to short-term thinking. like buying things with a credit card: you get the shiny new thing immediately, but the payment is diluted over time. likewise, once the sale is made, you may feel the reward immediately (though i guess it depends on the exact nature of the deal), but the work that will have to be done, will be done over time.

also, it's no wonder that the founder, or, outside start-ups, the marketing department, which specializes in promising impossible things, manages to evade the blame...

i agree with you that this is a technique that is used to make people give up. not only in the context of this discussion ("how is the economy doing"), but in many discussions. i see it being effective often enough for it to be worrying. i guess it's as they say, this is why you need a population that is indeed educated (on which these techniques would supposedly be less effective) for democracy to work.

the Wikipedia page on Europe you cite lists average, not median wage in Germany.

the average household income for Mississipi is given as $76,305/year by this US census link: https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2023.S1901?q=S1901&g=01... (which is cited in the Wikipedia page you cite)

there is also another question. the figure you cited for Germany is gross wage. net wage would be €3,324/month, or $45,536/year. is "income", in the US survey, after taxes? i wasn't able to find the definition of "income" in the American Community Survey, but i notice that besides "income", they also have "earnings" (which is higher).

finally, we need to correct for cost of living. i think that would explain a lot of the difference.

we were explicitly talking about people who went to university "for the joy of learning", instead of, as was cited as one of the examples, to prepare themselves for a good career, and how the latter can detract from the experience of the former.

physics students were cited as examples of people who went to university "for the joy of learning". i mentioned the existence of a path from a physics education to a very well-paying career which is moreover not generally considered intellectually stimulating, which suggests (though certainly not proves) the existence of (some -- though certainly not necessarily all) physics students who are not really there "for the joy of learning" -- which again, was one of the concerns i originally cited.

if you are or know a physics grad who studied physics "for the joy of learning" and then worked on finance and you think i'm not correct (say, because finance is actually intellectually stimulating, or that you were really into learning when in school but now are more focused on your career (i actually know a bunch of people for whom this is one is true, now that i think of it), or...), then by all means feel free to share your story, as this is literally what my question was about.

certainly questions can be raised about "corruption" and "nobility", as you did, but i did not intend to do that.

good to know, thanks. it does make sense.

there's still the professors though. the courses may not necessarily be different from their point of view.

also, what do you make of physics grads going to work on finance? doesn't strike as very "scholarly" of them, at first.

so, essentially, you and the other commenter are arguing whether it is everyone that has a little fault for being naughty, or is it just a couple of psychos who are fucking everyone else over.

but even if it was just a couple of psychos that were responsible, it'd be hard to justify stealing from the grocery store, because you are not guaranteed to do damage to the psychos directly -- maybe what'll happen instead is that the grocery store employees will not get a nice raise due to the decreased revenue.

and this is why i think actions of this type are so dangerous to society. it's hard to find who is the victim and who is the criminal. so people feel like they are a victim a little, and then justified in being the criminal in a crime with invisible victims anyway. and so society degrades more and more in a vicious cycle and more people give up. it's disgraceful.

while i agree that this "doorman fallacy" happens, and i also agree that it can happen in the context of restaurant servers, i completely disagree that this is an example of it.

problems cited: people ordering at the same time (limited by presence of a single QR code). splitting the bill, knowing what was items were already paid for or who already paid for it (made difficult by interface).

these are examples of problems where the tech solution can easily be much better than the human solution.

for example, you'd just need a larger number of QR codes. or, i'm under the impression that nowadays some phones can read QR codes even at weird angles; in this way even a single QR code could be read by multiple people in parallel. meanwhile notice that human servers can only take one order at a time.

and obviously super simple modifications to the interface solve your problems with the bill. but it's more often than not an ordeal to arrange with other people and the server to pay for 1/4 of the fries and 1/2 of the salad or something like that (unless the server themselves has access to a tech solution).

ways that the server could be better than the tech solution would be, for example, explaining dishes (ingredients, size, taste) or making suggestions.

so you go to university just for the joy of learning?

to be clear, i think that's cool, and i might try it at some point.

but how do you deal with the fact that university, in practice, is not "for the joy of learning"?

for most people there, students and professors, it's more like "just a job". and this does have an effect. colleagues that only want to pass the test and are watching out for their careers (or even worse, don't even care about anything and are there because of societal expectations) do not make good learning companions. professors who are very dispassionate about the subject don't want you taking up their time with fancy questions and administer dumb tests such that studying for the test is useless beyond passing the course.

(to be clear i'm not criticizing these people directly. obviously, i understand that bills have to be paid -- after all, i took some fun electives, not a degree in fun)

personally, during my time in university i did try a lot of elective courses "for the joy". it forced me a schedule, which was good, because it's something i struggled with self-studying. a few times, professors offered some real gems of knowledge which i wouldn't have found otherwise. and obviously, in practical classes, i got to play stuff i otherwise wouldn't. but the battle against the bullshit took up most of my time and energy.

my impression is that inside these niches, people know each other personally, or are only separated by a small number of degrees. reputations form, etc. so any paper they end up reading, most likely does not have completely unknown authors from completely unknown institutions. without this information, yeah, it'd be harder to judge. surely anyone can find out anyone else's (using full name and institution) academic background online today, but it'd not be so easy to judge it without being an insider.

I'm with you until I remember how expensive medical school plus internship is in the US.

in that case you should double check your math, because it doesn't work out like that

If doctors cannot pay back their student loans, it doesn't matter.

this is plain dishonesty. there have been actual discussions on how a significant number of physicians in the USA retire or semi-retire in their 50s!

a friend of a friend who did a stint in biomedical academia told me that the researchers in their field did not hold research coming from the medicine community in high regard

in that case, it's a question of proportion. we cannot automatically conclude that a (supposed) "good handful" doing good research makes up for "most students" doing bad research.

An employer is looking to screen two recent harvard grads by GPA, not really between a new grad and a 5/10 year ago grad.

that's a really good point, actually. in every situation i can think of where someone is looking at your grade (always admission to the next step in the ladder, in whatever form), you are being compared to people "from the same time" as you.

and i'd like to reiterate how difficult it would be to have a "stable" standard of mastery, no matter how nice. technical fields change a lot, and fast, these days. all across STEM, in 20 years everything changes. everything's so niche, as well, sometimes it may be hard to compare two degrees with the same name of different institutions. maybe we could do it with the fundamentals (mathematics and physics)? but look at a textbook from 100 years ago (say, Whittaker and Watson) and you'll find that even this changes. and even if the field doesn't change, the world does: i'm imagining how old-timers could claim that in their time information wasn't so easily accessible.

I've always wondered what the steelman is for curve grading.

assuming that by "steelman" here you mean "the justification", i believe the point is that a curved grade shows how you compare to others. the idea is that "getting 40% of the answers right" is meaningless if you don't know how hard the test is, so you'd rather have a grade that says "top 5% of the class".

this what i see as the justification, at least. not an endorsement of the idea

Or 100% Fs if you want to retire from teaching immediately

it's crazy to see that mentioned so non-chalantly. my expectation is that the teacher, when they grade, is meant to be impartial, as if they were doing nothing more than taking a measurement of the student's work, you could say (this is why, i believe, we value standardized tests in some settings, even though they are worse in other aspects). it's the student who is responsible for the grade. a teacher not being allowed to give F's to everyone suggests a corruption of the system to me.

can you share more? what pressures teachers not to do this, for example?

Yes, in positivist sciences 20% intending to stay would be very high by historical standards.

i'd be interested in a source for this. i did not find in the article you cite mention of historical trends.

When folks come home from a hard day of work they don't want HBO.

that's hilarious, since today, as many other days, i am literally looking forward to watching HBO when i get home from work