wallace_f

I used MIT OCW several years ago, but found it frustrating for three reasons:

1. Following the courseware is not always free, starting with the textbook

2. There are no milestones or credentials to track your progress

3. I found little community to interact with

This is just anecdotal. Some of these may have changed, be different.

Has anyone here worked through many of these courses themselves?

ACLU report on militarized police:

War Comes Home: The Militarization of American Police(1)

1-https://www.aclu.org/report/war-comes-home-excessive-militar...

To whoever downvoted this because they didn't like it: This is just a listing of further reading material on the topic, from America's leading civil rights organization.

I think we agree, but there are disadvantages. One is the power thing. "Your rights are theoretical until you have 100M" and a lot of people treat you differently depending on your wealth and status. That said, we know that's not the world we want to find ourselves in, but sometimes it is unavoidable. I know there is some balance, and that I am at some risk not joining into the rat race.

My friend read your comment and became enraged. He is a chef. He asks, "why PhDs?" "Haven't they already used a lot of taxpayer and non-profit dollars?"

Why should PhDs get a social stipend, but not a chef? This would ultimately be a net transfer of wealth from the chefs to the PhDs, by force of law.

>No technical challenge or abstract impact metrics really did much for my happiness (or money fwiw)

It resonates with me from a different perspective. I can't speak to the technical accomplisments -- I had a mundane tech job -- but I was making nearly 100k in total comp in my mid-20s in a low COL region, and my job was difficult for me. I know this isn't a lot of cash to many here, but it was a lot to me coming from being homeless at 18. However, my life took a bad turn, unfortunately. I had some unbelievable aggressions and weird things happen to me, and I left my job. I remember my history teacher saying of the past "If I was there, I would have done something about it," and yet all everyone told me at this time was something like "You need to stand up for yourself." I think most people today are just like they were back then, even if we are not burning people alive for witch craft, we still sometimes bully people under the name of pretexts and for unacceptable reasons. I then quit, left to try to play one of the most popular online games professionally (I was ranked #40ish at the time). I was really unhappy despite the intense competition and supposed fun and excitement of it. So finally, after that, I started travelling the world. The thing is, I started feeling like I was in heaven. When you travel, it's so easy to make friends and meet so many people in a setting where you are incentivized to share good memories, and not in a rat race or a "keeping up with the Jones's-type" of neighborhood, university or other setting. I mean, maybe it's that I am like a pariah or witch or otherwise bullied person and I dealt with a lot of extreme bullying that destroyed my social life and this contrasted with anything would be good. But I think it's also a lot about what you are saying: it's positive social interactions that really make us happy. I mean, I wouldn't wish my life on anyone, but I somehow found an amazing life out of it this way amidst all of the aggression and chaos.

What? You don't think you said something along the lines of the valuation of labor to a firm being tied to the opportunity cost of the product of that labor?

I was just following a thought from the OP's theory. Although it makes some sense as follows:

Regulatory Capture involves not just occupational licensing, but artificial monopolies over products and services. For a current example, Facebook has been lobbying congress and even publicly stating that they want to work with them to regulate social media platforms and news media; and even though many can see some benefit to these regulatory laws, the trouble here is that critics argue these types of regulations tend to entrench large corporations who have the legal staff and dev bankrolls to deal with these rules. Actually, many industries, even historically cottage industries such as agriculture has been in modern time criticized in this way as having rules and subsidies written by large industrial, corporate entities which benefit large providers by creating barriers to entry for small competitors.

In short, they create legal barriers to entry to creating the next providers, such as the next Facebook. In accordance with OP's theory, as the opportunities diminish, the value of labor decreases.

But yes, traditionally occupational licensing increases cost and barriers to entry to providing a product or service and is modeled as to increase salaties and decrease jobs as labor supply is constrained.

This is an interesting comparison of orthodox economics as you have mentioned with a reasonable yet heterodox theory in the wild I've seen. I haven't seen OP's theory stated explicitly before. Have you? Unfortunately in economics, we are dealing with the science of studying human decisions and as such it is grossly impractical to create a true scientific experiment here to determine which theory makes better predictions. This is probably also partly why economics tends to be snobby, pretentious and inflammatory: it is ultimately a war of words and mathematical arguments when it comes down to it.

Also, for the most part, isn't yet monopolized by lobbyists, corporatists and government working together to use regulatory capture to corner markets. It's pretty extreme in some industries, such as telecomm with natural monopolies, but also in markets without natural monopoloes. People even get arrested/fined for ridiculous things like braiding hair, giving haircuts (such as to homeless), selling hot dogs, selling cookies, or selling diet advice, etc.

So in accordance with OP's theory, if this were to happen the salaries for devs would go down.

>then it is not likely that you would be able to produce such a citation

I will prove you wrong. There's a citation to this usage in the OED back to 1811 that is specifically as I stated. If you had even tried to verify what you are writing you would have found this on your own. This is also flagrantly against this board's guidelines of arguing in good faith and not wasting time with flame bait writing such nonsense.

And look, if we're talking about an English word it is not unreasonable to reference the first instance of the word that language's country. But you sure did put effort in that point that technically speaking, there was an earlier police force, which also has almost no bearing on the idea that the word pig has been used to describe professional police for basically just as long as the english language would have been used to describe police.

Can you let me know what guideline you believe was broken?

Anothet fun fact: People have been calling police pigs since the first ones, the Bow Street Runners.

I know that, but the topic we are discussing is that this is the greatest decade. My response is in that context.

I know, people are stupid. There is no way to give our children their childhoods back, in this era of Trump, and when a child from Sweden asks him how he can do that for her he starts a cyber bullying war with her. The world is literally dying right now.

Everything has to do with science and innovation.

What about mass surveilance, rising suicides and homelessness, or never-ending wars, among other things?

Another title could be something like: "...and the art (quality and values) of human experience with technology"

>industrialization can be off-putting to those who would pursue a life of aesthetic and artistic beauty. He advocates for balance, suggesting that one can both explore the metaphysical qualities of life and stay connected to the more grounded functions of the machines we build. The book explores the concept of “quality” as a measure of a good life.

AFAIK most people are just after money, instant gratification and egoism(1).

1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_economics Most research on happiness suggests it's linked to socioeconomic status relative to your peers, not absolute socioeconomic status.

I didn't say it was a personal insult. I said it was an insult. And by the way, insulting without giving a reason why is exactly what my comment said it was: not an argument, just an insult. I can't believe I'm actually writing this to someone who ostensibly is an adult.

Wall Street is getting another half trillion in cash injection from the Fed.

People who work for a living see it like this: they want a voluntary economy. That's why they vote against "socialism." Most welfare we have goes to the rich.

My comment is not specifically about travelling to Thailand for prostitutes, and occurrence of that event could be ommitted from existence and my comment would have the same meaning, albeit a less apparent connection to the topic.

I'm speaking from personal experience. I have travelled a lot, and I've noticed this as a pattern over what must be hundreds of people I've talked to at this point. I don't really know if my sample is indicative of the US population--I'm just puzzled by what I've seen.

My intended meaning was that it is puzzling why Americans ostensibly tolerate policies which eliminate those markets, but only after they come back.

I'm always puzzled by all the Americans who travel to Asia for all the local markets: everything from food, to personal care, to sex markets, to even medical care. My dental care in Taiwan has been extraordinarily cheap and very good. And yet then I come back to America and see the same people ostensibly support the same authoritarian politicians, police and bureaucrats who spend taxpayer money on authoritarian policing of voluntary markets: everything from outright criminalizing markets, to creating so much red tape and regulatory laws that small business owners find it hard to compete. This is not to say there is not a place for sane and reasonable regulations. In all of Korea, Taiwan, Japan you can find street foods and sex markets and God Forbid outdoor jungle gyms and even full weight lifting sets at popular parks hiking trails. Even though those things can be technically illegal they are tolerated due to common sense, and I just can't see how our decisions to head down the path of authoritarianism in America is not just worse for all of: human dignity, prosperity, and freedom.

Uh, the very first sentence is an insult.

Ok well the insulting really convinced me that you are right.

This is just a statement of opinions without any reasoning or substantiation.

I get it that social media is extremely biased to the left and people agree with this kind of thing, but it's disconcerting that people cannot respond to the discussion which follows from first principles and logical reasoning. For example, by responding to the reasoning I gave. Not just saying "I disagree, and Elizabeth Warren isn't even socialist enough for me." It's so unconvincing.

>I'm not sure there are many examples of enlightened robber barons who allowed progressive changes that were counter to their interests but improved society as a whole.

Bill Gates' charitable work comes to mind. I wouldn't call him really a robber baron as the term implies wealth gained unfairly or from others involuntarily. The Fed is printing almost another half trillion in cash to inject, subsidize Wall St., for example. I also don't know if the term applies fairly to Samsung, as while the Korean history of chaebol companies was fueled by crony capitalism, their wealth does primarily come from their export-driven business where they compete globally. It's not like a JP Morgan (the person) or JP Morgan (the Wall St bank today) who really rely on borderline slavery from captive labor markets, or welfare from taxpayers.

Africa, China and South America have wonderful geologists and people just like America and Europe. What are you trying to say?

>The whole auto industry today is a large scale scam where we trade the environment and our health for corporate profits

In theory, it should be easy to solve transport within a metro area with low-carbon solutions such as walking, bicycling and public transport.

I'm continually amazed by how good public transport and walkability are in some cities outside America. Bicycles also have amazing potential and a few successes in the world as mass transit.

It seems the issue is not with engineering a solution, but with the politics of what gets implemented through our politicians and bureaucrats.

Here, I know your meaning is about market adoption of AI, but also on the topic of AI this made me wonder why it intuitively feels to me like Jevon's model would be inadequate, but do I only have this intuition because of my education? I think there's another way: critically test the statement:

>Jevons argued that improvements in fuel efficiency tend to increase (rather than decrease) fuel use

In other words, I can ask: does aggregate fuel usage depend on fuel efficiency? If I state the question this way and ask myself to answer it, it starts to become obviously an incomplete model to use.

This may seem so pedestrian but it is so confusing for me to think about in terms of conceptualizing what structure was needed to recognize a poor prediction model and considering a better one. This seems so different than what AI is today.

What's the end game of all of this corruption with governments picking winners and losers?

I mean there is a difference between reasonable regulations and just outright picking 1-2 cheaters who bribed you for the right to offer a service that supposedly free people are willing to pay for out of pocket.

We get stories about this in Russia and China and call it Putinism and Corruption all the time.