spangry

It's also great because there's no way for you to dispute my claims of feeling uncomfortable / "unsafe", since these (alleged) feelings occur in my own head. No one can dispute my feelings. And if you're foolish enough to allow my (claimed) feelings to govern your behaviour I now have arbitrary control over you. Neat huh?

Pretty much every human community has to be to some extent, with the exception of communities that face no external competition. Non-meritorious communities subject to competition quickly disappear.

I'm quite interested to hear about the connection between LGBT ideology and Gnosticism / transhumanism. Care to elaborate lo_zamoyski?

Another interesting use case - government training models on legislatively protected data (e.g. tax data). Lots of data the government holds is governed by confidentiality restrictions built into legislation, limiting its utility. Sounds like federated learning could be a way around that.

That assumption was suggested by the OP, not me. Thanks for suggesting I'm racist, but I'm basically immune to such thought stopping non-arguments at this point.

If disagreeing with making hiring decisions on the basis of skin colour is racist, then I suppose I'm racist.

> If I were a white man with the same experience, I might not even be here?

I can understand how DEI initiatives might undermine your self-esteem and I'm sorry you are made to feel this way, but take solace in the fact that you have a job. Imagine how the white guy who was excluded from employment because of his skin color feels. That's who the real victim is here - the person who was racially discriminated against.

> In my opinion, it would be beneficial if DEI initiatives were confidential and kept "hush hush" within a company.

Personally, I prefer companies to be loud and proud about their DEI initiatives so that I know which companies engage in racial discrimination, rather than it all happening behind closed doors.

I really like this approach - in some respects I think managers should be serving their subordinates. I've just recently become a manager of a data team, having previously been a data person myself. I find myself with very little time to do anything technical, and envy my team members when I see them doing technical work.

Do you have any advice for a technical person newly turned manager? Anything you wish someone had told you when you started as a manager / leader?

The way Medibank has handled this breach has been atrocious. Drip feeding information, minimising, misleading etc.

My data is in this breach and all I've gotten thus far is the bullshit comms corporate speak emails from their CEO. No personalised notification that my details are out there on the internet, nothing. There ought to be personal criminal penalties placed on company leadership for this kind of ongoing and, and this point, wilful negligence. Otherwise they will never have sufficient incentive to guard against this kind of risk.

To echo this: in Australia, people with even mediocre tech or data skills can walk into a federal government job as they're desperate for IT and data expertise. You'll get a combined yearly salary and retirement benefits of "only" about $150k AUD (~$100k USD) for a mid-level role. Certainly not big tech money but the hours are good and job security is rock solid. Tech people have it so good - I certainly regret my career choices.

> Nowhere did I state that. You are putting words into my mouth and making up fake arguments. You are doing a classic straw man. Just stop, with that, and argue actual points that I made.

But that is exactly the result of your preferred policies. You don't just get to push for a policy and then walk away from the consequences claiming they have nothing to do with you.

> There are numerous studies showing that diverse teams come up with better solutions.

There are also numerous studies that show diversity has either no effect or even negative effects on various measures of group performance - the academic literature on this issue is a total mixed bag. Here's how the OECD's [1] summary of the literature on diversity and firm performance:

> "Contrary to the often assumed, direct positive impact of diversity on business performance, research shows that at the firm level, the business case for diversity is not particularly strong. However, while the impact of diversity might be small, there is a strong economic argument against discrimination and non-inclusion based on the sizeable cost associated with it. Finally, the chapter notes ethical reasons for fostering a just and equitable labour market alongside the economic argument for diversity."

The literature also suggests the effects of diversity on group performance, whether positive, neutral or negative, are situation specific, depend on your measure of 'performance', and your definition of 'diversity'. Again, from the OECD:

> "A number of studies make a difference between ‘highly job-related diversity’, such as educational background, job position or function in the company, and diversity aspects that are ‘less job-related’, e.g. gender, ethnicity or age. Measurement of team performance includes multiple indicators, such as efficiency, creativity, innovation and productivity. Findings are somewhat mixed, but impacts of gender, ethnicity or age diversity are found to be either very small or insignificant. Some meta-analyses find no significant impact of gender composition, ethnicity or age on team performance (Horwitz and Horwitz, 2007[19]; Schneid et al., 2016[20]), while others find negative, but very small impacts (Bell et al., 2011[21]; Joshi and Roh, 2009[22])3. Most studies do, however, find a positive relationship between team performance and having teams with different professional backgrounds and other task-related characteristics (Bell et al., 2011[21]; Horwitz and Horwitz, 2007[23]; Joshi and Roh, 2009[22]). Overall, these findings from meta-analyses seem to suggest that team diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity or age do not matter much for team performance. However, there is some evidence that demonstrates the importance of situational settings by examining under what specific conditions diversity dynamics may unfold and how."

[1] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/5f8c1531-en/index.html?i...

So now they have to adjudicate the technical opinions of their engineers. Engineer #1 says they should hire person X for various technical reasons. Engineer #2 says they should hire person Y for various other technical reasons. How does a non-technical manager decide which opinion is 'better'?

I agree they shouldn't be writing code, but they should probably have a fair degree of knowledge about writing code. Otherwise, how do they decide which people to hire to write the code?

Number 3 is very interesting - Methionine is a crucial precursor to producing glutathione, the body's "master antioxidant". If the inflammation / oxidation hypothesis of depression that I'm spruiking is correct, then B-9 supplementation may help alleviate depression by increase synthesis of glutathione which is turn would reduce the level of free-radical caused neuro-inflammation.

I'm all for your particle-level simulation of the human body, I've had thoughts along similar lines (but unfortunately lack the skills and knowledge to implementation something like this).

Did those studies show a causal direction of depression causing neural destruction? My current notion is that the causality is reversed - chronic oxidative stress and neuroinflammation cause physical damage to the brain, which results in depression-like symptoms (e.g. low mood, poor memory, loss of motivation etc.). If this turns out to be correct, then there is a clear physiological cause of depression which can be cured through neuro anti-inflammatory and antioxidant medication.

> ECT should be retired from use. I heard once that brain damage causes the brain to increase production of the steroid allopregnanolone. The beneficial effect of the SSRI's seem to also be related to increased allopregnanolone, NOT to boosting serotonin levels.

That's a fascinating insight. Recent medical research implicates neuroinflammation in the pathogenesis of depression [0][1]. Steroids generally have anti-inflammatory properties. Allopregnanolone specifically has anti-neuroinflammatory effects [2][3].

It's amazing, inflammation appears to be implicated in all manner of diseases and conditions.

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ejn.14720 [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncel.2021.6910... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009130221... [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235228951...

Makes sense. If no student discloses their SAT then the university would have to assume that any given student achieved the average SAT score. If you're a student who got an above average SAT it's therefore in your interests to disclose your score.

Although these incentives should theoretically cause everyone to voluntarily disclose their SAT scores.

> I find it strange that this article presumes that you have all the right answers and that there isn't the possibility that you are the one who needs their mind changed. It points out that listening is valuable, but not because there's a possibility that the person you're talking to is in the right, no, you should listen to other people because studies show that listening to other people will manipulate them into seeing things your way.

Perhaps the article is being devious here. It's not easy for people to separate intentions and actions - sometimes an intention can form to rationalise a preceding action (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect). Even though your initial intention may be to manipulate by appearing to genuinely listen, you may end up just genuinely listening and rationalising that this was your intent all along. This line of reasoning could trick the most ardent zealots into accidentally genuinely listening to their enemies' point of view.

Relatedly, I think another effective persuasive technique is 'seeding'. If you can engineer a 'non-defensive' conversation with your opponent in which you seed one or two critical thoughts in their mind, although they won't be instantaneously persuaded the seeds can germinate into full persuasion later on. However, this technique requires avoidance of confrontational behaviours that cause your opponent to activate their mental defenses.

The transmission and land costs also trade off against each other to an extent: land close to demand is more expensive, cheaper land far away from demand requires more transmission infrastructure.

"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." — Theodore Dalrymple

> don't link directories and self hosted HTML blogs filter for a certain potentially unwanted writer bias? i.e. 30-something, male, agorist, nostalgic for the old internet, oddly niche hobbies, English as first or second language, ...

Why is this? (genuinely asking)

This is the great fear of many come to pass - censorship by algorithm. Facebook didn't outright ban sharing of the Hunter Biden laptop stories like Twitter did, they instead tweaked their algorithm to prevent the story from spreading. We found out about it this time because Zuckerberg owned up to it, but what about next time? For all we know, Facebook, Google and Twitter are doing this right now on a range of other subjects.

It's scary to think that just 2 to 3 corporations have the power to construct a false reality around us, in a way that's virtually impossible for us to detect.

Why doesn't the government auction H1B visas? If H1B numbers are capped then they are a scarce resource that should be price-rationed so they are allocated to their most productive use (i.e. to companies that are willing to pay the most). It would also mean more of the gain from bringing over H1B workers would accrue to the public instead of private companies, which would increase public support for immigration.

This is such a fascinating area of research. I think it's increasingly clear that there is a common thread tying together conditions like long-COVID, MS and chronic fatigue syndrome - a long-running and persistent viral infection leading to a chronic immuno-inflammatory response. Other seemingly unlikely diseases such as Alzheimers, depression and even schizophrenia may may have neuro-inflammatory origins too.

This article hints that the persistence of the Epstein-Barr virus might be causing the chronic inflammation. But I wonder if it could instead be due to some sort of non-linear process in the immune-response that causes our immune system to enter a positive feedback loop when it's activated for too long or in a certain way. And perhaps the therapy for this would be to suppress the immune system for some period of time to allow it to abort this feedback loop, perhaps something like this: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/patients-resorting-to...

I think the value of elder wisdom is not problem specific, but rather problem-class specific. Older people repeatedly encounter various classes of problems throughout their life, and eventually they discern a generalised solution or pattern. It's like an elder programmer imparting architectural or software design patterns to a younger programmer. The elder programmer doesn't need to know the programming language the younger programmer is using; they only need to recognise that the problem the younger programmer is trying to solve belongs to a class of problems that they know a pattern for.

True, younger people will always face unique problems in their life due to changes in society, but many important aspects of life and society, human nature for example, don't change much from one generation to the next. Elder wisdom from your direct genetic relatives (e.g. grandparents) is particularly useful, because they share personality traits with you and know from experience how those traits interact with certain classes of problems.

I think tapping into this is simply a matter of younger people bringing their problems to their elders and asking for advice.

It's just anecdotal, but I found myself unintentionally saving money like crazy when I was WFH during lockdown due to not selling out every day for fuel, parking and buying lunch. But then again I'm someone who always pays the 'disorganisation tax'. I'm sure people with more optimised spending (e.g. catching the bus, bringing their lunch in from home etc.) didn't see as much of an effect.

Any bulb / hardware recommendations? Also what do you think of mixing UV in there in some limited quantity?

Because America influences the world we live in. When you live in the empire, keep one eye on Rome.

Revenue maximisation in this case is not a great goal. The idea behind congestion pricing is to price-ration road-usage so that people make socially optimal use of roads (which in theory is achieved by setting prices at marginal social cost). Pricing should vary in line with road congestion so that people respond by altering their road usage patterns (e.g. shifting working hours so their commute is outside of peak times, make road deliveries in non-peak hours etc.)

If you go for revenue maximisation you won't be setting prices at the social welfare maximising level. Also, you'd probably want to charge higher prices for heavier vehicles as they cause more road damage per unit of distance travelled.

Wouldn't that strengthen the echo-chamber effect? If the original poster supports position X and does not allow anyone who supports position Y in to the conversation, then a position Y person will eventually start another thread and not allow anyone from position X to reply. So now you have two threads: one for position X supporters and one for position Y supporters, with no cross-talk between the two.

Unless, of course, there's some kind of mechanism that gives threads with higher engagement more prominence? That might create an incentive to have more inclusive conversations. Although that might incentivise trolling too...

EDIT: Perhaps combine the above with a reputation system, where you can see how ban-happy an original poster is. Since people don't like to waste their effort writing a reply that just gets ignored, ban-happy posters would be penalised by lack of engagement. Then platform provided moderation could just become a kind of 'meta-moderation' - basically just banning people who try to game the system (e.g. posting threads saying 'please reply so I can get my ban percentage down').