peacetreefrog

This is the root cause, the fact people don't pay for their own healthcare and there's no competition. Then we layer on this huge complicated system to try to contain costs other ways.

It is sort of funny the book is in the ABC style (presumably helping kids at the age they're trying to learn their ABCs) and then talks about things like garbage collection. Sort of disparate. Oh well, some portion of a kids books are for the parent too, and it's really sort of random what kids will take to. It's not like Brown Bear makes any sense. I bought a copy of this for my 15 mo old.

Maybe it's a mix of both. I think it's a huge stretch to say the author or this book is weighing in on nature vs nurture and genetics vs practice debates though.

I think you're projecting. The simpler explanation is what he says, "although [Amazon has] thousands of books explaining how a construction site works, and hundreds of books explaining how farms work, they did not have any books that explained what I did [as a programmer]".

No, the question asking about specific rates is talking about what the top marginal income tax rate should be (I can't see the actual question, but it's clear that's what thehill.com, who commissioned the poll, is referring to when discussing it).

You could argue that when people say the rich should pay "more", they're talking about effective rates, but a lower marginal income tax rate would be a funny way to raise top earners' effective tax rates.

Not sure what evidence you're basing that off of. An alternative explanation would be people calling for taxes on the rich to be "raised" aren't really sure what they currently are.

What are you talking about? I suppose there's technically wiggle room because you said "raise" taxes on the rich (implying that regardless of whatever rich people pay now it should be more). But it's an absolute fiction that rich people don't pay taxes. The top income tax rate is about 43%, and the new GOP tax bill doesn't change that.

Did you know the richest 2.7% of all earners pay > 50% of all receipts collected by the government(1)?

Or that -- when asked explicitly whether the rich should pay more -- most (3/4) people, like you, say "yes", but when asked what the tax rate should be for top earners, precisely 3/4 of respondents said it should be 30% or below(2). Again, the top rate is 43% right now.

(1) http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-...

(2) http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=15005

Not knowing much about it, but taking an outside-in view here. You have a guy (Oswald) with a rifle and telescopic sight, aiming and shooting and purposely trying to kill Kennedy. Kennedy was shot and killed. Why is it so hard for people to believe Oswald was successful?

Occam's razor. Bayes theorem. Seems incredibly unlikely that there was a second shooter or accidental fluke shot from a secret service agent that just happened to occur right when Oswald was intentionally and purposefully doing it himself.

They're not fumigating, they're spreading a bacteria that kills (only supposedly) mosquito larva.

http://www.mmcd.org/mosquito-control/larva-control/

Yeah there's a strong "jobs for jobs sake" vibe in this article.

Made this in React with framework Grommet (which I really like). Backend is in Google App, which I also like. Subset of fantasymath.com, which does the same thing, but for the whole week and costs money. Only really relevant 17 days out of the year (including today), but good response so far.

Great response. And people do tell it, there are a ton of "why my startup failed" articles on HN all the time.

Ha, I think it's a really good pick axe though. That is a good analogy for Daily Fantasy Sports though, where you do weekly games and tournaments ect to win real money. My model has some very useful features that might make it valuable there, but the sites take anywhere from 6-8% off the top, so yeah, on average when it comes to Daily Fantasy, selling pick axes certainly has a higher EV than actually playing yourself.

Ha, yes that's on my to do list!

Planning a 'Show HN' on this as we get closer to the season, but I built a model for Fantasy Football that works pretty well and has done over $500 this month. Takes into account correlations across same-opposing team players to give a slight edge.

https://fantasymath.com

Modeler by trade, had to learn all the back and frontend stuff myself, been really fun so far.

I sort of get the cross device thing, but who owns, uses and switches between multiple voice assistant devices?

Seems sort of like an Echo/Home plus, where you could just get crushed if Amazon starts adding the ability to send texts or something.

Nice! Just went back and checked, I subscribe to SSC and read the original version via email, that didn't really get into the math major thing. Scott must have added the note on math afterwards (maybe he reads HN?) - anyway, cool to see it born out by data.

With respect, I feel like part of you having been down voted is because your second paragraph is doing exactly what you accuse this memo writer of, namely "sets forward incorrect assertions about biological differences without the self-awareness about why he takes those differences as truth".

A cursory reading of the literate suggests at least some evidence that the differences can't be explained by socialization, for example. See:

"In her preface to the first edition, Halpern wrote: “At the time, it seemed clear to me that any between-sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts and mistakes in the research, and bias and prejudice. ... After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high and numerous books and book chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles … I changed my mind.”

"Why? There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable. It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks. A much more recent study established that boys and girls 9 to 17 months old — an age when children show few if any signs of recognizing either their own or other children’s sex — nonetheless show marked differences in their preference for stereotypically male versus stereotypically female toys."

https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-...

Is this the end all be all? No. Does it mean women can't be good engineers? No. Does this episode lead to more self awareness all around? Hopefully.

I'm saying, free speech (an open exchange of ideas, tolerating views that are sincerely and respectfully made, or at least trying to charitably interpret those views, especially if you think they're wrong) should be something groups of people and organizations aspire to.

The fact many supporters of this guy's firing are treating these principles as technicalities is troubling. The first amendment is a starting point, not a loophole.

It's definitely a hypothesis, seems testable too. Not a ton of vet or linguistic or biology shows though.

So you're issue is that math is more "things" oriented too, so why would women make up 45% of undergraduate mathematics if the things/people brain differences were real? I think it's an interesting point.

It's purely anecdotal, but the two women math majors I personally know are high school math teachers, which would be more "people". Are math teachers enough to account for a 20% (engineering) to 45% (math) difference? Probably not, but I think it is more open ended in terms of what math majors end up doing vs engineering or computer science.

I find Scott's arguments persuasive though, and could easily be fitting my memory/interpretation/facts etc to work within other beliefs. Post hoc rationalizations like this are always tricky.

read the summary on page 6

https://pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/beta-goi...

It's crazy to see such overtly anti free speech arguments in the discussion around this memo, even on Hacker News.

"Well actually, the first amendment only protects against government intruding on free speech, it doesn't apply to the rest of us!"

Free speech used to be the thing everyone agreed on. It's like a fundamental tenant of Western, liberal democracy has gone out of vogue.

Particularly apt: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

Doesn't he mention it in the context of an explicit 50/50 men/women goal? Maybe it's achieving that scenario which could lower the bar, without saying anything about the current women working at Google?

"In the year 1850, women were locked out of almost every major field, with a few exceptions like nursing and teaching. The average man of the day would have been equally confident that women were unfit for law, unfit for medicine, unfit for mathematics, unfit for linguistics, unfit for engineering, unfit for journalism, unfit for psychology, and unfit for biology. He would have had various sexist justifications – women shouldn’t be in law because it’s too competitive and high-pressure; women shouldn’t be in medicine because they’re fragile and will faint at the sight of blood; et cetera.

"As the feminist movement gradually took hold, women conquered one of these fields after another. 51% of law students are now female. So are 49.8% of medical students, 45% of math majors, 60% of linguistics majors, 60% of journalism majors, 75% of psychology majors, and 60% of biology postdocs. Yet for some reason, engineering remains only about 20% female.

"And everyone says “Aha! I bet it’s because of negative stereotypes!”

"This makes no sense. There were negative stereotypes about everything! Somebody has to explain why the equal and greater negative stereotypes against women in law, medicine, etc were completely powerless, yet for some reason the negative stereotypes in engineering were the ones that took hold and prevented women from succeeding there."

The problem is bringing up biological differences (even just in terms of groups and allowing for lots of individual overlap, and even in this case, when the differences aren't nec better or worse, just differences). It's a non-starter to many people, particularly on the left (see the Bell Curve).

One the one hand, I sort of get it, given historically people have used biology/similar arguments to justify a lot of awful things. If Hitler was around now, it'd be sort of disgusting to ask people to engage his argument on its merits (this is where some of the Nazi language re: this manifesto comes in I think).

But, when it's presented like it is here, making clear that individual variation is much greater than differences between groups (e.g., he's not talking about existing female engineers at google or anyone else in particular), stressing that diversity/human dignity/worth etc are all paramount even if there are group level biological differences/trends. Then I think the lynch mob/monoculture/not engaging reaction is in the wrong, and the reaction to this very much proves one of the guy's main points. But that's my two cents.

Definitely, I think your 2nd paragraph is the thing most everyone is missing. He basically says exactly this in the memo.

cool. i feel like this whole thread is the epitome of hacker news comments

In my experience, there're (at least) two ways of using data in an organization:

1. Top down. Where you start with a problem/decision, and use data to inform it. "What phone plan should we offer our customers?" per the article is topdown, and data science can help inform the answer.

2. Bottom up. Where you start with a bunch of data, and try to brainstorm, "OK what cool things can we do with this?". I worked for an IOT company that collected a bunch of sensor data and we'd run into this all the time. We'd take our best shot and report back to clients, who'd say, "Cool, but what do I do with this?". Not saying you can NEVER come up with something useful, but it's a lot harder.