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31.
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by
somestag
9y ago
> Would you ask someone who had studied carpentry for empirical evidence that studying carpentry produces people more skilled in the carpentry than if they had not studied it? Yes I would, if it seemed to me that an awful lot of people w
32.
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by
somestag
9y ago
Yeah, I think there's a certain fallacy going on with respect to uncertainty. It's like studying for exams. Sometimes in school I studied for 10 hours for exams that turned out to be trivially easy. I barely needed to study at all
33.
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by
somestag
9y ago
Are you arguing that it's impossible to learn without feeling bad about yourself? As in, you must feel personally ashamed and hurt, or else you're going to make the mistake again? If not, you're probably going to have to ex
34.
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by
somestag
9y ago
I don't think there's a native English speaker in the world who reads the phrase "<x> is garbage" and interprets that literally as "this is just a metaphor for deciding not to use something and thus throwing i
35.
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by
somestag
9y ago
I think we disagree on your assumptions. Positive team environment and corporate culture are not inextricably linked. They may overlap depending on the corporation in question, but they are not one in the same. This should be obvious since
36.
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by
somestag
9y ago
Isn't that kind of a non sequitur? The idea that "Google is evil" (not that I agree with it) and the idea that "It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize others without induc
37.
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by
somestag
9y ago
You're probably right. But still, I wonder how much of it is enhancement , and how much of it is a reduction in some suppressive mechanism. Example: It's well known that beginning artists struggle with perceiving the world as sym
38.
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by
somestag
9y ago
Along those lines, I've found that a big part of my procrastination and resistance to work (or doing anything productive, really) is that I enjoy my own thoughts too much. Thinking freely is fun. It's creative. It always feels pro
39.
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by
somestag
9y ago
You can criticize any interview technique by questioning whether it can really effectively measure <X>. The answer is always no, and even if it were yes, you can go on to point out that <Y> is also important and is not effecti
40.
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by
somestag
10y ago
Sure, and sometimes insanity looks like insanity to an observer. In this case, I find it very hard to believe that the issue is rights . The drivers don't intend to hit the pedestrians—they're being reckless, not oppressing the
41.
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by
somestag
10y ago
> This is like standing in the crosswalk screaming at the cars that you have right-of-way. This is literally what people do where I live. I once saw a guy stop walking in the middle of the street and flip the bird to a driver who didn&#x
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by
somestag
10y ago
> ... they'll give you long-winded explanations justifying cheating ... This is kind of off-topic and nitpicky of me, but it's something that's been on my mind recently, so I'll go ahead anyway: For many things in li
43.
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by
somestag
10y ago
That's interesting; I didn't even notice it. But the border doesn't scale with window size, and I tend to keep my windows large on an already large monitor, so the relative effect was small and (subjectively) even pleasant. I
44.
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by
somestag
10y ago
Surely you must know that you're blowing down a straw man here. Your statements all presume, for no reason, that these people are gambling, and that if they lose their gamble they will have "no reasonable future." The article
45.
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by
somestag
10y ago
Well, the conventional wisdom says that recruitment at top law firms selects for candidates in the upper class. This article is saying we should adjust that; it selects for upper class men , and women are not benefited by hinting at higher
46.
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by
somestag
10y ago
Multiple models are fine, so long as you have clear signaling. As you point out, it's not terribly hard for the consumer to tell the difference between 13", 15", etc. Usually it's not that easy, and tech releases are s
47.
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by
somestag
10y ago
> You'll never be really good at anything you don't care about. Depends on your definition of "care." If by care you mean find interesting or enjoyable , then I have to disagree with you. I'd say most people a
48.
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by
somestag
10y ago
I agree with the article as a whole. I just personally believe that the median is generally worse to use than the mean, so I believe that if you're going to recommend the median over the mean, you should provide guidelines on when to
49.
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by
somestag
10y ago
Clearly the best approach is to directly answer the question at hand with the most relevant numbers/statistics available. I'm all for that. I'd argue you'd still want to use the mean more than the median, but it's n
50.
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by
somestag
10y ago
The median is worse than the mean in a skewed distribution if you want to take the skew into account. In fact one of the strengths of the mean is that it is sensitive to changes in the entire sample, rather than only part of it. To repeat m
51.
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by
somestag
10y ago
Yes that's true. I was being somewhat charitable in affording it that benefit, but I did so because the article is the one that brought up the 1.9 legs example so that was kind of an implied benefit. And it's also true that you ca
52.
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by
somestag
10y ago
I think the message of the article is great: move beyond the "standard" descriptions and pay more attention to what you're trying to show and who your audience is. That said, it's a slight pet peeve of mine when people r
53.
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by
somestag
10y ago
Yes, this is definitely the true issue. Suspect whomever you want; carry out your investigation with an open mind regardless. To disregard a pattern is stupidity, but to enslave yourself to it is laziness.
54.
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by
somestag
10y ago
I think the issue here is that the term victim blaming is not a simple sum of the meanings of victim and blaming . It's become something of an idiom. As the parent said, when someone cites "victim blaming" they're n
55.
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by
somestag
10y ago
The aggressiveness is unfortunate (and counterproductive), but comes from the understandable perspective that too much bad press could kill the language before it even gets off the ground. The Rust thesis is: "You should care about all
56.
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by
somestag
10y ago
I think we've both made our points, but there are two/three last things I want to say: 1. The word beg only suggests a position of weakness in one context. Although that's how it's most commonly used, it's complet
57.
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by
somestag
10y ago
Because the word "begs" is easier to say than the word "suggests," partly because it's one syllable instead of three. It's easier, it's better, and it's the phrase I want to use. (It's also more
58.
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by
somestag
10y ago
Yes, it's no worse than beg your pardon or beg forgiveness . In fact, omitting "for" is so common after the word "beg" that it could be considered standard (correct) English.
59.
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by
somestag
10y ago
In fact, I'd say that the "misuse" actually makes more logical/linguistic sense than the "correct" meaning. I've been knowingly (mis)using begs the question to roughly mean suggests the question ever s
60.
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by
somestag
10y ago
I'd say the most appropriate term here is intuition (which I'd say is definitely regular ol' learning, but that's a matter of definitions and semantics).
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