wdewind

> One issue is that if you have a large effect that's consistently and easily reproduced, you don't actually need very accurate measurements or a statistical analysis at all.

I mostly agree with this, but you never have that in a difficult decision.

> Another issue is that science is expensive and we need to make decisions all the time whether there is any science backing them or not. So what do you do if there's no science that meets the minimum standards?

Right! My entire point is that maybe data driven decision making isn't as useful as we think because it mostly doesn't hit scientific levels of accuracy. Maybe there are other, more intuitive systems, that make as much if not more sense, in absence of good data. How would we even know either way? We can't!

Regardless I'd love for the discussion to be "this is the best we can do" rather than "yes we did A/B testing so we know it's true!!!"

Right, but I guess what I'm getting at is frequently we see people doing even worse: making policy decisions based on data that doesn't even hit a minimum threshold for acceptability. I totally agree that people shouldn't make policy decisions solely because the data supports it, but frequently you see people make decisions based on data indicating something without actually being statistically significant. That feels like a bigger problem to me than people actually getting good data but then using it too confidently, which I have rarely if ever seen.

TLDR: People tend to make policy decisions based on data even when the data is basically useless, I'm more worried about that then blindly following good data.

> "3. Scientific conclusions and business or policy decisions should not be based only on whether a p-value passes a specific threshold.

There is no lower threshold at which the data becomes non-predictive?

Sorry but your examples don't add up. You're showing a 20 year time frame of outperformance, and admitting there are places where performance is a negative, and then claiming all of this shows that there is a strategy that works well all the time. Definitionally this is not true. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding, totally possible.

The major point of OPs statement is that while sometimes you can get lucky for a short period of time (which is what you just cherrypicked), for an endowment you can't really do stuff like that because you are so big and have such a long term perspective. Regardless, I'm not seeing the narrative you describe in your graph.

Right, in 2008 when the entire economy tanked they also tanked. You can't really out-diversify the entire economy tanking. What happened in the years after that? Oh right that paper has no idea because it was last updated in 2010.

Yes, you're not going to get paid market rate as a junior developer coming from a bootcamp. Hell, most startups aren't paying senior level people market rate when compared to G/FB etc.

My first job was hugely under market rate. I was up to market rate in about 3 years. But I had to change jobs 3 times to do it. It's not easy, definitely not saying that. But it's doable.

> Ultimately, demonstrable programming skill seems to factor in very little for junior positions.

This has not been my experience.

Apply to startups. I don't know what else to tell you. I'm seeing TONS of people (for better or worse) get placed in jobs after completing coding bootcamps. Some of them have >90% placement rates.

I don't know if that's true. This strategy certainly isn't going to land you a job at Google/FB/etc. but I'd be happy to chat with someone in their 30s who'd just gone through a bootcamp kind of thing and was offering a similar deal as someone who is currently hiring at a startup and we had a position for a junior/recent college grad.

To me the biggest snafu is that it's a lot easier to do the whole "I'll work for free" thing when you're 20 and have no responsibilities.

I'll also add, though, that there was a huge faith component in myself and in the startup industry that "things would just work out," and I was also miserable in school at the time, so alternatives were bleak. Having worked in the industry I've now been given a dose of reality, but having that kind of dumb faith allowed me to grow very quickly (though painfully, too), and I'm wondering how much that learned risk aversion is hurting my personal growth. That's my big takeaway from this, at least.

> When I asked why, I was told "this worked because you were naive enough to think that this would work". I've been here four years now, and it's still the most important email I've ever sent. Maybe luck, maybe naivety, but I'm thrilled it's worked out.

When I was half way through college I decided I no longer wanted to be in school. I emailed a bunch of startups saying essentially "Your company sounds cool. I'll come work for you for the summer for free as long as we set up some kind of goal system where I can get a job offer at the end of the summer." I ended up getting two offers from that and never looked back. I didn't end up lasting 4 years there like you, but I am definitely glad I did it.

Ironically enough, now that I'm somewhat into my career I can't see myself doing something like that again, which is too bad. I've picked up some risk aversion along the way :(

This is also not the only project Matt was working on while deployed because I remember talking to him via email about some other pretty ambitious stuff. Kudos to Matt for really taking away the excuse of not being able to try something on the side even when you're fully employed.

I've actually met him and talked about his beliefs as well as read a lot of what he's written. I quite like him, but I think he frequently gets the broad strokes correct but misses on the details, and I don't think this is the first instance where he's done so.

> It's true that Rushkoff is making - and has always made - the dissenting point that perhaps the Internet should be more than a machine for extracting cash and attention from the people who use it.

And I'm disagreeing with the premise that it is just a cash extracting machine, because it is so only in the most simplistic and overly cynical of analyses. I get that it hasn't solved world hunger, and I get that there are many problems, but I think if Rushkoff understood how the web functioned at a deeper technical level he'd feel a lot less strongly about his beliefs. Similar to the Marxists that form the foundation of his beliefs, if he actually had to implement his ideas in real life he'd understand why they aren't a panacea.

> Too much politics, too much inane nonsense. Yet I feel compelled to go there.

A valid criticism of facebook, but that's not at all what he's talking about. He's saying that to the extent that he uses facebook for his career (ie: marketing his books), he feels that he's giving away the contents of his book and that is ultimately hurting sales:

Professionally, I’m thinking it may be good for one’s career and business to be off social media altogether. Chris Anderson was wrong. “Free” doesn’t lead to anything but more free. Working for free isn’t leverage to do a talk for loads of money; now they even want you to talk for free. What am I supposed to do? Join YouTube and get three cents for every 100,000 views of my video? That is crap; that is insane!

It's a completely ridiculous notion that's contrary to what anyone who is making money in the digital economy has figured out: digital content is marketing for stuff you can charge for. The fact that Rushkoff can't find stuff to charge for is indicative of a painful truth that he should consider: he's actually not creating that much value.

He complains about getting 3c for every 100k youtube views, but never at all considers justifying why people should listen to him, simply that it costs him time to create this content.

It's actually a pretty marxist philosophy (the labor theory of value), and it has huge limitations in terms of describing our economy.

That was actually the original point: the pinky is extremely necessary in swordfighting and by cutting it off you made yourself more dependent on the clan. It's a show of commitment.

> a profound impact on my health

Can you expand on that?

Title.

The article has a title, and the contents don't match the title until nearly half way through the piece, and also don't really continue to match it past there. The length of the introduction is appropriate for a short book, not a 2000 word essay. As the article makes clear, the answer is still unknown, and so the article as titled should not have been written. Changing the title alone could make this a better written piece, but as is it doesn't match the expectations given to the reader.

Seriously...what a poorly written article. 2 paragraphs of content surrounded by fluff.

Yeah I was implying that the green line is the way most people get from BK, BX and upper manhattan into Midtown, where most of the jobs are. But yeah I pretty much agree with everything else you wrote. It's a tough situation.

Just to play devil's advocate: the vast majority of (even technical) people have no interest in running a mail server. Who should Google optimize for?

> Street congestion is increasingly a problem, not so much because it slows down private cars but because it slows down buses. Those bus delays in turn increase subway ridership, and overcrowding slows trains loading and unloading.

I think the issue is population growth not matching funding (or Albany robbing us). I don't doubt that this contributes, but I'd be surprised to see people switching from buses to subway being a leading cause of subway congestion.

> Although uber does probably deserve some of the blame t

Again this seems like a really small thing. I doubt uber created many new taxis, so much as absorbed yellow/livery cabs. I'm sure it has an effect but I don't think it's the core issue.

> The answer is a congestion fee like Bloomberg wanted to put in.

100% agreed with the congestion fee, bummed it didn't happen.

> That leaves the majority of Manhattan with spare subway capacity to move people around.

I don't think this is true. One of the reasons the green line is so overcrowded is because so many people work on that line. It's not only about where people live. If you put people next to the E, it doesn't mean they only take the E.

> it is because of crowding on the Lexington line that I suggested densification should start at the south-west part of the neighborhood which has access to the sixth avenue line subways.

I agree that we should rezone and that the preservation stuff is a nightmare.

Sept. Doubt it.

> but Manhattan could have significantly higher population density without overwhelming the infrastructure.

This is not really true, mostly based on the transportation infrastructure. Manhattan is absolutely not ready to move more people around per day. Both train and car traffic is rising sharply and neither system are scaling particularly gracefully. I'm not informed about water treatment, police/fire services etc., but I'd be surprised to hear that they are operating with a lot of room for growth. Hospitals are a mess.

Have you ever played any Sim City at all? Jeez this is basic stuff :)

That price is insane. I pay less for a bigger apartment with brand new appliances, dishwasher, roof deck, doorman etc and I live in a much better location in Manhattan. I even pay less than the unfurnished price.

And cannot choose to just liquidate these shares whenever they want. There are rules, and these things require multiple months advance warning and lock in.

> My guess is that some VCs were leveraged and had to liquidate positions.

VCs cannot just sell public stock on a whim, these things are scheduled far in advance and can only happen during trading windows.

Point a) is actually heavily contended. Fraud is not estimated by any credible economist to have had a major (>5%) impact on the financial crisis. In a market situation there is always a disagreement about whether or not a security is worth what it is worth, hence the sale taking place (both sides think they are getting a good deal). There was disagreement about AAA securities of course, but it's very unclear if that is due to market valuing stuff differently or outright fraud. The contents of the loans were not lied about, whether or not they were AAA was not lied about, whether or not they should've been AAA is up for contention.

I don't see your point with b) at all.

If you're a bank it's not like there are a ton of avenues for you to invest your money, and outside of mortgages there aren't a lot of ways to pass the money onto consumers. So if what you want is the bank to pass its new found money onto consumers that's the avenue you want. Unfortunately the last time we did that a lot of unqualified people got loans. So my point is it's tricky.

> but not pass anything onto the consumers, instead using it for more high risk trading

The economy was destroyed by passing it onto the consumers through subprime lending (and a bunch of other things - not trying to assign fault for the subprime crisis here), so high risk trading is not mutually exclusive to passing it onto consumers.

I actually think the insulin response 100% affects psychology (which is why I think we are in agreement here, still). At this level it gets very tricky to differentiate between "just the psychology" and a physical reaction, though, and so my point is there is no evidence of any bad health effects caused directly by the insulin response. An insulin blood spike is not unhealthy for you in and of itself, but sometimes it will cause you to eat too much and that's not good for you. That gets into will power, which is the place where the mental and physical meet, and where both groups of models tend to not work particularly well. It's not well understood and it's Complicated.

I agree with you about the sorry state of nutritional science, and when it comes to diet I'd love to see a lot more resources put into the psychological (especially reward pathway/will power) aspects of it.