starship

I've done the same (50 resumes for two positions, phone interviews with 15-20, follow-up in-person interviews with 4). That's 10X interviews. But 100X? Assuming anyone he hires goes through multiple follow-up interviews, I don't see what information he's getting from these interviews that couldn't be handled by a subordinate or by email. Evaluating someone for "fit" is impossible in a short interview like that.

"Though I averaged two interviews a day, we had only grown the team by three-four engineers each year."

Wait a second, he was interviewing 100X more people than he was hiring??? Does that seem a little extreme to anyone, or is it just me?

Let me clarify my point. Our economy is based on the notion that things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. What if some people are willing to pay more than others? Then businesses have to choose: either they practice price discrimination, i.e. try to sell each and every unit for exactly what that person was willing to pay, or they set one price that will attempt to maximize their profit.

You can find many examples of each. Anyone who auctions off their goods practices price discrimination. i.e. 3 identical baseball cards auctioned separately on Ebay fetch 3 separate prices. Same thing with a seller in a street market who gives different prices to different buyers (tourists vs. locals) and then haggles with each and every buyer.

My point is, people seem fine with this kind of price discrimination in a lot of settings, but not all settings. For some reason, there are certain settings and triggers that change their view from "hey this is how things are supposed to work, this thing is worth what I'm willing to pay" to "hey I'm getting ripped off!" Why is that? And what are the triggers?

Businesses put a lot of work into finding pricing discrimination "tricks", including discounts and premium upgrades, and that on the whole is a fascinating topic to me.

Did you read the article you just linked to? Here's a direct quote "From a social welfare perspective though, first degree [perfect] price discrimination is not necessarily undesirable. That is, the market is entirely efficient and there is no deadweight loss to society."

Without price discrimination, unless you're operating tax-free and subsidy-free there is always a dead-weight loss. Perfect price discrimination eliminates it. It is literally right there in the article you just linked to.

Regardless, it never ceases to amaze me how controversial pricing discrimination is. Especially since most people have taken Econ 101: pricing discrimination eliminates dead-weight loss, which should be a good thing right? Nope, instant controversy.

I'd like to second the request that someone test this who is in a place where they can easily do so. Thanks in advance.

And I'm saying, your opinion is stuck in the 1990's. John Carmack was very excited about both the xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. He's just not excited about the next generation because, in comparison to the most recent generation, he believes we're at diminishing returns for having more and more powerful 3d graphics. Which is exactly why he's taking VR headset development into his own hands.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE3DF1E30F... "The Xbox 360 is the first console that I've ever worked with that actually has development tools that are better for games than what we've had on PC" -John Carmack

http://www.ripten.com/2011/08/14/john-carmack-thinks-the-ps3... "His keynote lasted more than 90 minutes and throughout, you could clearly tell that John had become a fan of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console"

He was also excited about the innovation in the Wii remote controller, and the Wii is what he plays with his kids.

The 1990's were fifteen years ago. Since then Carmack has spent 60 hours per week writing code for every conceivable console, PC, and mobile platform. Most people in his position would have moved into management by this point, he chose not to. As a result he has more expertise on more topics than just about anyone else in the gaming industry. And more than most in computer science generally. If he has an opinion on something, its because he knows what he's talking about.

Profiling is absurdly counterproductive, but not for the reasons the paper describes. We don't need detailed analysis for this one, simple math will do. Just to be clear, we're talking about heightened security procedures for passengers of Arab ethnicity (as a proxy for people of Muslim faith.)

The problem? The majority of muslims aren't Arab! There are large numbers of: - asian muslims, Indonesia = world's largest muslim country - black muslims, across various African countries, i.e. The Underwear Bomber - white muslims, in the balkans and Chechnya for example - And of course there's large numbers of muslims in India, Pakistan, and Iran who are not of Arab ethnicity, although they might or might not look similar enough (depending on dress most likely) to get thrown into the same profiling bucket.

The paper goes into the details of how a profiling system would be optimally set up, but the entire issue is moot. The premise that we have a good understanding of what groups should be receiving heightened security screening is itself wrong.

(Note: I couldn't find the statistic with a few minutes of Google searching, so I'll keep looking, but I know I have seen it reported that >50% of muslims in the world are of ethnicities other than Arab.)

Uh-oh, lookout, it's a Highlight killer! Just like how facebook killed foursquare (fb check-ins), quora (fb questions), Craigslist (fb marketplace), and whatever it is they were trying to kill with fb credits, now they're coming for Highlight.

Might as well give up now, Highlight. You're doomed.

I don't think it's possible to celebrate Turing's life without mentioning how his life ended. Turing was without a doubt a war hero. His work allowed the Allies to crack the Nazi's enigma code, without which the war could have gone very differently. Nonetheless, a few years after the war the UK government, upon discovering that Turing was gay, prosecuted him for homosexual activities and treated him horrifically. His security clearance was revoked, and it's not hard to imagine that this had something to do with his suicide at age 42. Just something to keep in mind on this gay pride weekend.

It seems the barbarians of medievalism and quackery are always there just outside the gates, ready to drag us back into the dark ages if those who value science over superstition don't proactively keep the light burning.

Anyone know of any Turing events going on in the Bay Area?

This isn't that complicated. From your original post: > If I go with a friend who understands the context, they can explain to me the history

Either your friend's explanation improved your experience at that museum/gallery, in which case I say "Put it on a plaque", or it didn't because our understanding of art can't be improved by any kind of brief explanation and really you need to "take an art history class" as you directed us to do. So which is it?

My conclusion is this: if including any kind of explanation --short, long, anything-- can improve the average person's experience at a museum or gallery, then they should do so. The fact that they don't makes a lot of people skeptical about the entire thing, which is a shame.

I meant the company that was bought. "face.com"

I wasn't saying facebook just bought it for the domain name. I was saying face.com, as a startup, at some point bought that the domain name "face.com" despite having little to no revenue.

Also, I can't believe the top post for this article is by someone who, a little further down one of the threads, basically said "eh, actually I take it all back".

haha, the whole time I was clicking around, a non-zero part of my brain was sitting there thinking, "ok, but where the hell did that daddy thing come from?"

This article is pure speculation...

face.com -- all I can think of when I see this is "how much did they pay for that domain name???"

It must have been in the 10's of thousands of dollars. How that can be a good use of startup resources is a complete mystery to me...

So to go back to your original post: you get a quick summary from your friend, and that's sufficient to "get" art, but I have to spend three months going to an art history class?

Give me a break.

In the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, they have a tree ring from what might be the oldest tree ever found. Next to that gigantic slice of wood on the wall is...a giant plaque. The plaque describes in detail how measuring the life of a tree from tree rings works, as well as the history behind that particular tree and when it was cut down.

In fact, as I recall, there was such a plaque next to almost every exhibit in the entire museum.

If the artist intended to express loneliness, but instead gave most people a feeling of "hey look at those happy people on a beach", then that wasn't good art that was ruined by a plaque. It was just bad art.

> Pretty soon people are reading their way through the museum.

Yes. Yes that's exactly what I want to do. I want to spend a day at the museum, and read, i.e. learn, why some things are important and great art, and others aren't.

> for most contemporary art, there is not even a critical consensus about the work.

What? Then how is any decision made as to what art is featured in these exhibits, and what isn't? Remember, for every piece in one of these exhibits, there are 10 artists getting behind on rent who didn't make it in. Someone decides. Who? How?

If you're trying to counter my current argument, which is that this is all arbitrary and picked by some insiders at their whim, you should be aware that you're actually kind of helping my case here...

Well...then they can get a bigger plaque.

Remember I'm responding to the person above who was saying there was a very straight-forward explanation and way to understand art based on X, Y, Z, A & B. If that explanation is so straight-forward, they can probably fit it in a couple of paragraphs.

Regardless, I think saying "well its reeeeally complicated, so we're just not going to explain ourselves at all" is pretty indefensible.

The "dilemma of the palette", I grapple with it constantly. if you never develop a palette for something, you never have to spend the money on "the good stuff". Applies to scotch, wine, beer, cigars, and food, among other things.

Of course, appreciating some of these things has some social benefits. And of course, in each such case, you can just fake it.

That makes very good sense. The problem is, a lot of us have been to modern art museums, where you'd think that next to every piece there would be an explanation as to the X, Y, Z, A & B that you mentioned. But there never is. So why is that?

You must admit, it's not a crazy idea that they are being intentionally opaque because the decision of what art is "great" and what is "crap" is not being chosen out of merit, but by the whims of an insider few. Is it really so hard to believe that the artists who are considered "hot" right now are just better at working over these insiders who pick the winners and losers?

I agree, that is a false dichotomy. Here's an alternative: read a lot of things, including one or two books by the "pickup" people. Glean from their stuff some things that are useful, and toss out the rest. If you're so averse to paying $10 for a paperback copy of The Game (which as a first-person account is also a story with some pretty high entertainment value btw), then borrow it from a library.

No one is advocating buying into their whole philosophy. But as I said in a parallel thread to this one, unfortunately those guys have developed the most accurate and detailed model for modern day social interactions that I've seen. After I knew what to look for in terms of body language, group dynamics, etc. the difference was night and day.

Actually, starting right now, AWS is probably your best bet.

Old story about Chuck Yeager from the 1950's: one time shortly after take-off, Yeager's aircraft suffered an engine failure, and he had to do an emergency semi-crash landing. When he realized that a mechanic had put the wrong type of fuel in the plane, he went looking for the guy. The mechanic profusely apologized, said he would resign and never work in aviation again. Yeager replied something along the lines of "Nonsense. In fact, I need someone to refuel my plane right now, and I want you to be the one to fuel it. That's because of all the guys here, I know you'll be the one guy who'll be sure to do it right."

Probably apocryphal, but the point has merit.

I just don't think this is true. I think the majority of people that end up looking into the pickup stuff are normal guys, who are bad at talking to girls, and who want a relationship. Most people don't want to spend the time and money necessary to have some kind of clubbing 3-nights a week lifestyle.

The reason those books recommend going out multiple times a week, isn't to have that lifestyle per say, it's because that's the only way to accumulate enough hours at practicing these social interactions to internalize it. Once most people reach that point, they stop going to clubs and spending all that money. Then they use the skills they learned through trial-and-error on strangers to date people in their social circles.

The "pickup artist" stuff may ooze sleaze, but as a detailed model for human social interactions it really is the best model that currently exists. This paper is extremely simplistic by comparison.

If you want to have a better understanding of all the intricacies of group dynamics, body language, etc. unfortunately I don't know of any other resource. Does it comes with a lot of BS and sleazy stuff attached? Yes, so just filter that out. But don't ignore it completely, you're doing yourself a disservice. A lot of the power dynamics and body language stuff applies to work situations as well btw...

Sorry, no citations here, just my personal experience, so believe what you want. But I can tell you its like night and day now that I know what to look for.