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Coincidentally, there is another current attempt to use a LW poll to determine whether a simple test is useful for predicting success at programming-like jobs. Basically, it just asks you at what age you learned to touch type.
I'm a sysadmin now, but I learnt to type when I was a rock critic.
Well, I hope you told the poll that your career attempt succeeded and also put in the age that you learned.
Even if they've been repaid, the low interest rates might represent a big transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy.
They might represent a transfer from taxpayers to bondholders and shareholders of banks, but not to the tune of $9 billion.
Also thank you for providing the reference I was in too much of a hurry to.
They might represent a transfer from taxpayers to bondholders and shareholders of banks, but not to the tune of $9 billion.
Typo: you meant, "trillion".
In response to
After critical event W happens, they still won't believe you
You mention Deep Blue beating Kasparov. This sounds look a good test case. I know that there were times when it was very controversial whether computers would ever be able to beat humans in chess - Wikipedia gives the example of a 1960s MIT professor who claimed that "no computer program could defeat even a 10-year-old child at chess". And it seems to me that by the time Deep Blue beat Kasparov, most people in the know agreed it would happen someday even if they didn't think Deep Blue itself would be the winner. A quick Google search doesn't pull up enough data to allow me to craft a full narrative of "people gradually became more and more willing to believe computers could beat grand masters with each incremental advance in chess technology", but it seems like the sort of thing that probably happened.
I think the economics example is a poor analogy, because it's a question about laws and not a question of gradual creeping recognition of a new technology. It also ignores one of the most important factors at play here - the recategorization of genres from "science fiction nerdery" to "something that will happen eventually" to "something that might happen in my lifetime and I should prepare for it."
I know that there were times when it was very controversial whether computers would ever be able to beat humans in chess
Douglas Hofstadter being one on the wrong side: well, to be exact, he predicted (in his book GEB) that any computer that could play superhuman chess would necessarily have certain human qualities, e.g., if you ask it to play chess, it might reply, "I'm bored of chess; let's talk about poetry!" which IMHO is just as wrong as predicting that computers would never beat the best human players.
Offhand I'd think a world like that would have a much higher chance of survival. Their initial hardware would be much weaker and use much better algorithms. They'd stand a vastly better change of getting intelligence amplification before AI. Advances in neuroscience would have a long lag time before translating into UFAI. Moore's Law is not like vanilla econ growth - I felt really relieved when I realized that Moore's Law for serial speeds had definitively broken down. I am much less ambiguous about that being good news than I am about the Great Stagnation or Great Recession being disguised good news.
How bad is an advance (e.g., a better programming language) that increases the complexity and sophistication of the projects that a team of programmers can successfully complete?
My guess is that it is much worse than an advance picked at random that generates the same amount of economic value, and about half or 2 thirds as bad as an improvement in general-purpose computing hardware that generates an equal amount of economic value.
In response to
David Brooks from the NY Times writes on earning-to-give
I am going to quote in its entirety a comment at Hacker News. Jason Trigg is the young philantropist referenced by the NYT article.
I went to college with dozens of Jason Triggs (including myself). We'd talk all the time about the money we'd make right out of college and how much good we'd do. ("$36k to work at a soulless consulting company? That's amazing! I'm living on less than 1k/month in college. I could save 5K and give 10k away and not even notice!") We had plans to give 20, 30, or 50 percent of our income away. Some of us even managed to do it for a couple years. The world gets to you, though. Your coworkers that dress nicer and go to happy hour with the boss get promoted. It gets tiresome to commute from a tiny apartment in New Jersey. You buy a house or get married to somebody who doesn't make much money. The stock market tanks and takes your savings with it. You figure out that you hate consulting and end up teaching science in a junior high. After a couple years, I'd bet that the average charitable contribution of my peer group had gone down to 5% or less.
I wish Mr. Trigg luck, but we've already lived his story. He might get a few good years in, but his life is unlikely to work out like he plans
One additional problem with season four, in my opinion, is that it's not tightly written at all. Because the writers didn't have any time constraints, many jokes really outlive their amusement value. For example, the scene with Lindsay and Tobias in their house in the third episode.
When I become aware that a comedy is trying too hard, it can interfere with my enjoyment. The first few episodes of Buffy were like that. They were very tightly written. There were long stretches in which not 15 seconds went by without some sort of humor. I got the sense that the creators really cared about my reaction and were probably trying to impress me. All of which made me wary, which of course reduced the probability that I would laugh. In contrast, Arrested gives the appearance of sloppiness and not caring very much, but my guess is that that is a careful choice made by people who do care very much about what they are doing.
Arrested Development Season 4 was occasionally amusing, but didn't really catch fire like the original three seasons. I think a number of things hurt it:
Most of the actors have since become major stars with full schedules. Thus the story had to be written around their availability; and there were many fewer ensemble scenes.
The original series revolved around Michael Bluth's exasperation with his family's insanity. Because most of the adult characters were loathsome and pathetic in different ways, you shared Michael's pain in being part of this family. In Season 4, Michael stopped being the straight man and became as equally pathetic as every other adult. Only the younger characters (George Michael and Maeby) were somewhat sympathetic, and consequently only the episodes focusing on George Michael and Maeby actually clicked.
The story didn't really come to a climax. It was more like Act 1 of a three-act structure (and not a strong Act 1 either). It feels like the writers just hit the end of the contracted 15 episodes and stopped where they were.
On the plus side, there were still a number of laugh out loud moments; and lots of new Orange County Easter Eggs for the locals. I wouldn't subscribe to Netflix just to watch Season 4, but if you already subscribe, it's worth the ten hours it will take to view.
None of the things you list have bothered me or detracted from my pleasure. (I have seen the first 5 episodes.)
I am amused by your judging a very good comedy by the standards of drama (in your point 3). Sure, almost all comedy is improved by having dramatic elements and a dramatic story line, but since very good comedy is so much rarer and harder to pull off than very moving and very satisfying drama is, it does not occur to me to regret that the show would not be a particularly moving or satisfying drama if the comedic elements were removed.
In fact, I tend to regard the purposes of the dramatic elements as (1) helping me care about the characters, which of course makes the comedic elements better, and (2) keeping my mind occupied while my "humor batteries" are recharging themselves, i.e., counteracting the effect in which the final jokes of an uninterrupted series of jokes lose their kick. Of course, neither the presence of a dramatic climax or three-act structure contribute substantially towards those two purposes.
In a way I like (what I have seen so far of) season 4 even better since in season 2 or 3 the writing got a little mean (very occasionally) in the same way that for example David Letterman (much more often) gets mean. To be precise, David Letterman used to get mean the last time I watched him about 15 years ago, but he probably has not changed that.
I'm not a medical professional either, but...
Except in the specific cases of microbes that target the immune response, wouldn't you expect to see things like an elevated white blood cell count in patients suffering from a pathogen, even if the specific pathogen was not well recognized or understood? In other words, you would see the symptom in a blood test even if you didn't know exactly how to look for the pathogen.
If the pathogen reproduces slowly (the pathogen that causes TB might be one such) or has some way of hiding from the immune system or is one of those viruses (e.g., the herpes family) that get into cells and tend to remain dormant for long intervals, then they can be very hard to detect and will certainly not show up in a WBC. I saw news reports earlier this year about evidence that some cases of obesity are caused by gut microbes not previously regarded by, e.g., doctors and society as being pathogenic.
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No one's mentioned neuro-linguistic programming, created by people living in Santa Cruz, CA, which if not in the Bay Area, is certainly adjacent to it.
(I'd describe it as a contrarian approach to psychotherapy.)