bkovitz

8 ms·

91.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Another problem with the theory: a major symptom of depression is inability to concentrate. When you're depressed, it's like your IQ takes a 30-point hit. You become much worse at thinking things through.
92.
by bkovitz 17y ago
SciAm is indeed amazing, but this particular article seems like pure speculation.
93.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Interesting idea, that depression is useful for ruminating. But, the reasoning seems premised on the idea that depressions are triggered by stressful events like discovering that your spouse has been unfaithful. Doesn't most depression oc
94.
by bkovitz 17y ago
I did some work on amb last semester in grad school, and my prof wants me to publish it. I didn't feel motivated to write a paper, though, because I couldn't see the point of amb. This article makes the value of amb clear, though: abstrac
95.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Maybe half rhetorical. I skimmed half the article, began to feel annoyed, and decided to ask here if it's worth digging through the article for some interesting observations about what engineers know.
96.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Does this article say anything about what engineers know?
97.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Oh, come on, folks. The DFW piece is ignorant whining. Some problems: 1. The great many people who live "unexamined lives" tend to be much happier. According to the research, conservatives are happier than liberals, people in the Midwest ar
98.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Great observation. The article never mentions anything about "first mover" or "network effect". It seems completely bought into the fallacy that intrinsic product quality is what determines the winner in a market.
99.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Yes. It's not obvious, but there are a bunch of links at the bottom of the page. Very interesting reading, lots of interesting details.
100.
by bkovitz 17y ago
This is easy to say now, but doesn't the piece come off as a suicide note? "I have been miserable my whole life, and the best solution I've come up with is to browbeat myself with an impossible standard of humility. Ecch."
101.
by bkovitz 17y ago
I don't think it's a joke. You have no choice but to overgeneralize from experience. If you limited yourself to only what you can support by direct observation, you would be catatonic or dead.
102.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Oh, come on, folks. The DFW piece is ignorant whining. Some problems: 1. The great many people who live "unexamined lives" tend to be much happier: conservatives are happier than liberals, people in the Midwest are happier than people on t
103.
by bkovitz 17y ago
In these post-Lisa-Belkin-New-York-Times-Magazine-“Opt-Out” years, we’ve now learned the worst: even female Harvard graduates are fleeing high-powered careers for a kinder, gentler Martha Stewart Living. Not only does the Problem Have a Na
104.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Support for classical music. iTunes treats individual movements as "songs", not part of a complete piece of music. So, you can't, say, click on Dvorak's Piano Trio in F minor, you have to first create a temporary album to hold all three mo
105.
by bkovitz 17y ago
It was indeed an epiphany—really, a synthesis of a lot of ideas that were fairly new and floating around at the time (wikis, Extreme Programming, free content, and others). The main idea of Wikipedia, even its combative/collaborative style
106.
by bkovitz 17y ago
"He pioneered the idea that user-driven content, and not the work of PhDs working with a cave full of parchment, can be relied upon to throw light on every conceivable subject in this world." Hrrmph. I don't want to take anything away fr
107.
by bkovitz 17y ago
This is quite a good observation: something reasonably close to apprenticeship is already in place. Grad students are given enormous flexibility in their assignments—a little trick to buy them time to try out their own research ideas long b
108.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Not included in the extensive list of objections is the fact that any redefinition of the semester schedule would meet gigantic political resistance. Colleges have been doing that lecture-homework-exam thing for centuries now, and they're
109.
by bkovitz 17y ago
How long did it take? The usual story I hear about Ritalin is, "Wow! I took one pill, and in an hour or so, I was in a different world: totally focused, getting my art history homework done, and even caring about it." What kind of "first e
110.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Paul Erdös was a heavy Ritalin and Amphetamine user for the last 25 years of his life. He died at age 82. He was enormously productive at an age when most mathematicians have stopped producing anything. http://www.amphetamines.com/paul-e
111.
My First Ritalin Experience(false-epiphany.com)
7 points by bkovitz 17y ago|15 comments
112.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Rebuttal: I am a social retard, typical geek, and it was only in San Francisco that I found some success meeting women. There are lots and lots of really interesting, amazing, beautiful women in San Francisco. I dated a bunch of them.
113.
by bkovitz 17y ago
I want wisecracks to have less power to derail thoughtful conversation. Not an easy problem to solve, BTW. There is a good reason why thoughtful conversation is so easy to derail: it asks for a lot of mental bandwidth, and the competition
114.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Some technological problems. I want: * Sysadmin work out of my way, or at least reasonably simple, and real information available when I run into a problem. * Ad-heavy, information-poor web sites to stop showing up so high in SERPs.
115.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Here are a few political problems. I want: * Journalists to be able to make a living doing the hard work of journalism. * Formal education to be conducted in a way that facilitates learning rather than bureaucratic hoop-jumping. * Manual l
116.
by bkovitz 17y ago
I usually record my thoughts by writing an email to a friend. We each do this for each other: serve as an audience.
117.
by bkovitz 17y ago
Did you find the work world even more time-fragmented than grad school? Hmm, the post comes down to saying that grad school is run on the manager's schedule rather than the maker's schedule. http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
118.
by bkovitz 17y ago
The title of the blog, or the title of the article?
119.
The Agony of Grad School(false-epiphany.com)
22 points by bkovitz 17y ago|23 comments
120.
by bkovitz 17y ago
If newspaper organization and culture are killed off, it will be hard to regenerate them.

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