pjmorris

50 ms·

601.
by pjmorris 6y ago
> I wonder if this cohort effect is exacerbating inequality. It seems to me that increased capability would be more strongly correlated with productivity than with inequality. Certainly there's some correlation between productivity
602.
by pjmorris 6y ago
"extreme late binding of all things?"
603.
by pjmorris 6y ago
> Are you implying the “winners” know what they are doing with technology is immoral but are willfully casting it as moral just because they are in a position to do so? Probably more the latter ('casting it as moral because they are
604.
by pjmorris 6y ago
> So you’re saying that technology, by is ability to select the winners of conflict, shapes/influences the nature of society’s moral compass. Maybe more like we bend the compass to see what we want to see in it. I'm reminded of
605.
by pjmorris 6y ago
> It's amoral and when owned by the "good guys" (whatever your definition), it amplifies those morals and ethics and vice versa for the "bad guys". I think my main point is that it is the technology-wielding side
606.
by pjmorris 6y ago
How long before we get 'Jerry Maguire' for developer agents?
607.
by pjmorris 6y ago
I don't see it that way; The aggregate effects of cost optimization by amateurs with spreadsheets at 100 F500 companies, 1000 mid-sized firms, 10,000 cites, 100,000 small firms has got to look a lot like policy.
608.
by pjmorris 6y ago
> Shifting the moral responsibility from the human/user/corporation to the technology itself seems illogical. Sure, it is people who make decisions, and so they have moral responsibility (at least in my model of the world and i
609.
by pjmorris 6y ago
'Technology is neutral' presumes equal access to technology. Technology without uniform access yields a power imbalance.
610.
by pjmorris 6y ago
> Technology was always just a tool There's a 1918 plaque in Bath, NC that reads "Bath, originally the Indian town of Pampticough, was settled by white men about 1690 and incorporated in 1703. It is the oldest town in North Car
611.
by pjmorris 6y ago
Maybe. I'm more worried about hundreds of thousands of amateurs with computer models (Excel spreadsheets.)
612.
by pjmorris 6y ago
The Waldorf-Astoria played a minor part in my family's history. My grandfather worked as a dishwasher there when he first emigrated. Really cool to learn a bit more about the place.
613.
by pjmorris 6y ago
Perhaps the specific example policy seems intuitive to some. I'm wondering about the general case. There's a problem of interpretability in AI models, it seems like there's also a related problem in terms of how to make decis
614.
by pjmorris 6y ago
The US would've never been a country had it followed Thatcher's advice. It took borrowing to fund the Revolutionary war. It also misses or misunderstands the value of a central bank and a reserve currency.
615.
by pjmorris 6y ago
FTA > “It would be amazing to make tax policy less political and more data driven,” Seems like an ...optimistic... viewpoint. IMO, the model, the data, and the notion of fairness are all political. > "the result appears counterin
616.
by pjmorris 6y ago
So, that's an optimization problem around cost of benefits versus amount of revenue, right? The company can view it from the aggregate perspective; they might lose money on some low-hour employees, but still capture the revenue, enhanc
617.
by pjmorris 6y ago
I think that far and away the biggest cost for housing in the West is money. Yes, interest rates are at all time lows. But that means loan amounts have skyrocketed in comparison to incomes. That has impacts across the economy.
618.
by pjmorris 6y ago
> But if you make the drivers employees then the company has no reason not to schedule their hours inflexibly, because the flexibility was only needed to attract workers at the lower level of compensation. What if there were another purp
619.
by pjmorris 6y ago
I heartily endorse it. Someone once compared Weinberg's writing to a coal mine; "there's something worthwhile in every shovel-full." 'Psychology of Computer Programming' was published in the early 70's and
620.
by pjmorris 6y ago
"If a programmer is indispensable, get rid of him as quickly as possible." - Weinberg, Gerald. The Psychology of Computer Programming.
621.
by pjmorris 6y ago
Hear, hear. That said, I do think the beaches and the springs do quite a bit to help maintain a positive summer attitude. (Native Floridian)
622.
by pjmorris 6y ago
I think there's an argument for Prince as one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. But he may not be at the top of the engineering philosophy game. I guess we all have our weaknesses.
623.
by pjmorris 6y ago
I once read a Harlan Ellison essay on the power of the spoken (and written) word applied to radio stories. He had a line about the imagination having a much larger special effects budget than any movie studio could ever achieve. It always s
624.
by pjmorris 6y ago
> In my opinion mainstream software will be abstracted away to the point where you are working on defining and refining requirements. And will likely look very different. In some sense, the same thing could have been said 50 years ago, a
625.
by pjmorris 6y ago
For balance and discussion, Andrew Gelman's critical review of 'The Book of Why': https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/01/08/book-pearl...
626.
by pjmorris 6y ago
Are you presuming that a 'well-thought [out] design' means that all the thoughts, and the design, came only at first? I can see a well-thought out design either as the waterfall you presume, or as an accretion of design decisions
627.
by pjmorris 6y ago
Would refactorings [0], e.g. 'Extract Method', 'Replace Primitive with Object', ... , be an appropriate analog for programming? [0] https://refactoring.com/catalog/
628.
by pjmorris 6y ago
The US department of defense's R&D budget is over 100 Billion/year, e.g. [0]. Google's is about a quarter of that. I realize R&D money isn't a proxy for ideas, but it is a proxy for the people that have them. [0]
629.
by pjmorris 6y ago
Our six month old was on the list. It was a shock when we went to the airport, and they asked that he be taken aside for an interview with a TSA agent. We wrote a letter explaining the situation, and got a letter back acknowledging that our
630.
by pjmorris 6y ago
'Mercy triumphs over judgement.' (James 2:13, NIV) Also: 'Esse quam videri'. "To be, rather than to seem" 'If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' 'In the land of th

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