newtothebay

Tom, could you please share how you've worked on your emotional wholeness? This is an issue I recognize in myself, but do not know how to begin to heal.

Facebook has this exactly this tool, aka Conversion / Brand Lift [1]. It's a real experimentation system, not a "simulated" one like Google's Ghost Ad.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/688346554927374

Can you talk about how to infer causality without running an experiment? From your description, "real-time processing + auto ML + algorithm" still sounds very much observational to me.

I'm asking not as knock against your service, but genuine curiosity about how you manage to solve this incredibly hard problem.

EDIT: From your white paper, it looks like you're running a regression that controls for a bunch of confounders. You also interact the treatment variable with those confounders to get the heterogeneous treatment effect.

My concern with that is that we're not controlling for unobservable confounders, which make causal inference so difficult. If we assume that controlling for observable confounders is enough (we shouldn't!), then correlation and causation are the same.

White paper: https://blog.clearbrain.com/posts/introducing-causal-analyti...

What you said regarding US stealing IP from Europe is true.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take defensive measure. Do defend our IP because that's our self-interest. Don't do it with the moral pretense.

What would be other ways to do it (with similar level of efficacy)?

There's one argument with hitting the kids that I don't know to argue with. It goes like this.

There are things in life with consequences that are dire yet can only be felt in the long run (e.g. a smart kid can coast with bad work ethics until college / grad school / start up). As a parent, you can explain these consequences, and the kid may intellectually agree, but can not fully internalize.

Hitting the kid is simply a way to translate these long-term consequences into short-term ones that can be more easily felt. It's simply the equivalent to celebrating milestones in a long project, translating long-term benefits into short-term ones that can be easily felt. Why is the former vilified, while the later touted as good practice?

Isn't a flat tax rate already "proportionate to size and income"? What's the justification for higher tax rate for the rich? I agree that their wealth depends on public infrastructure, but I'm not sure that their level of dependence is higher than us.

(I'm asking as a proponent of progressive tax rate, just not for this reason. So I'd like to clarify)

As a young professional who's realized the importance of maintaining a network, I'd love to learn how you stay in touch with your former co-workers.

Do you reach out for weekend lunch dates just to chat? Are people open to that (given work, hobbies, kids, etc.)? I'm having a hard time coming with "excuses" and serendipity to stay in touch with people I'm no longer working with.

Humanities knowledge is just a tool which may and may not be used for good. FAANG already hires tons of humanities and social science PhDs to understand user behaviors. Whether that's used for good or ill depends on what the corporations are incentivized to do, not on the number of humanities grads employed.

(I'm speaking as a social science PhD employed at FAANG.)

For readers who may encounter the Arrow's Impossibility Theorem for the first time, its conclusion is shockingly true but also doesn't prescribe doom. There are reasonable alternative voting systems that don't run into the same "Impossibility" problem https://ncase.me/ballot/

Thank you! This is fantastic.