wegs

32 ms·

211.
by wegs 6y ago
People at the top are beholden to other people at the top. It's a cycle. If a CEO does not appease shareholders, board members, and executives, there will be a new CEO. That's structures. And people at the top rarely understand im
212.
by wegs 6y ago
MIT students are a bit ahead of students at other schools. Faculty hiring is such that there are no substantial differences in faculty quality. The difference between an MIT professor and a state school professor is mostly random chance. Oh
213.
by wegs 6y ago
No. Systems are not just people. I know many organizations which have really good people, but completely toxic cultures due to systems. Systems are things like checks-and-balances, incentive structures, power structures, organizational desi
214.
by wegs 6y ago
It's been analyzed in much greater depth. Pfeffer's "Power" and de Mesquita's "Dictators Handbook" are treatments from a psychological and game-theoretic point of view, respectively. Both are well-research
215.
by wegs 6y ago
I feel less bad about MIT taking money from Epstein, than the cover-up around it. People and institutions make mistakes. That's okay. It's a question of what you do about them. MIT has a history of hiding stuff like this, and of i
216.
by wegs 6y ago
The vast majority of people are doing the right thing. The vast majority of people in highly-competitive positions are not doing the right thing. * A statement like "all politicians are corrupt" is to a first order accurate. You c
217.
by wegs 6y ago
All schools do NOT do this. I went to MIT: * MIT wouldn't be caught dead with JUST 64 students admitted on the basis of connections and donations. * MIT wouldn't be caught dead letting external auditors look at this stuff. * MIT w
218.
by wegs 6y ago
I think you've made my point for me. If moral lines are easy enough to move that people will "shovel Jews into gas ovens and pull out people's fingernails," it's not hard to find people more than glad to cross class
219.
by wegs 6y ago
Hey, it puts food on the table, and my kids are hungry. And it keeps the debt collector at bay. The implied expectation of class / race / ethnic / ... loyalty is fundamentally flawed, though. I'm friends with people of m
220.
by wegs 6y ago
Untrained gig workers. Angry tenants. I can't imagine what could go wrong here.
221.
by wegs 6y ago
I mean, this sort of shit happens in our court systems all the time. This just raises the visibility to where we all see it.
222.
by wegs 6y ago
Capitalist markets, even when thinking through the long term, don't work like that. A lot of costs of messing with employees are externalized. If I lay off my workforce after a product ships, issue stock options worth 10 cents, or othe
223.
by wegs 6y ago
And after you leave. They have nasty non-competes, and they do sue employees on the way out the door. Even when they're wrong, they're right; threat of cost of lawsuit is enough to deter 95% of their employees. I didn't want
224.
by wegs 6y ago
Last I looked, Microsoft's culture was toxic -- much more so than Amazon, Google, or most any other major tech organization. A ton of in-fighting, and decisions made for political reasons. They were working hard to clean it up, but I&#
225.
by wegs 6y ago
I think one of the problems Amazon suffers -- and this is not a condemnation of the company as a whole -- is that it treats employees like garbage and runs a sweatshop. There is zero loyalty among Amazon employees I know. Some are very high
226.
by wegs 6y ago
Yes. It was a long time ago. GoDaddy was where all the tech crowd went after Network Solutions circa the year 2000. They were great! Until they weren't. Since then, I've gone through 2 more registrars which went down the same path
227.
by wegs 6y ago
As far as I can tell, the general business model in domains is: * Be the good guy, and establish a customer base. Provide low prices, good customer service, etc. Lose money on the razor-thin margins. * Once you've got a ton of customer
228.
by wegs 6y ago
I find this not evil. If this is covertly used, that'd be evil. I agree with the argument "If you do it to extract information from your user to which they would not consent, it’s evil." However, we tend to get caught up in t
229.
by wegs 6y ago
Yes. It's made THEM billions of dollars. If you've ever been on the other side of the pipeline, as an advertiser or a web site owner, you know you're treated as a statistic. Businesses suddenly disappear when Google delists t
230.
by wegs 6y ago
Only Google doesn't really do B2B. They're B2C. Oracle does B2B.
231.
by wegs 6y ago
I am careful with conclusions about dehumanization. Be careful with what you write about whole groups of people. The culture we're born into is NOT a choice. Whether you're in a red-state culture, a blue-state culture, a Chinese c
232.
by wegs 6y ago
Sounds like you've got it all figured out. Read what you've written again. You've dehumanized half of America, and, well, subhumans ain't worth talkin' to. It'd be nice if someone saved them from themselves, bu
233.
by wegs 6y ago
> I talk to people almost every day in a completely uncensored environment who have nothing but the purest hatred and mockery for all liberal or leftist people and liberal or leftist ideologies. And I live in one with the same feelings f
234.
by wegs 6y ago
> and especially Fox News. Watching Fox News doesn't mean you have to agree with it. Citing someone as saying something doesn't mean you need to agree with them either -- a citation means that you're pointing to what someo
235.
by wegs 6y ago
We do get to both-sides this. The thing Facebook did amazingly well is silo people who hold identical opinions, and drive inflammatory false content to them. This maximized clicks, while inflaming and radicalizing people on both sides. Hatr
236.
by wegs 6y ago
1. Free doesn't excuse harming students. 2. And it's not all that free. It's a growing business founded on hype and freemium. CS50 peddles it's wares on edX for $180 per "program," and it's being monetized
237.
by wegs 6y ago
No. It would be a bad idea. This course looks good. CS50 is overhyped dogshit. The CS50 lecturer is an egoist, very good at selling you on it being THE GREATEST COURSE EVER, and convincing you that you're learning REALLY HARD THINGS. O
238.
by wegs 6y ago
Welps, let's look over the evidence. You say: "Because that disagrees not only with the common sense of seeing what is happening in front of us, but also with all the other evidence I've seen" This statement suggests you
239.
by wegs 6y ago
From your other comments in this thread, I assume the evidence you refer to is the President's twitter feed, rather than scientific journals?
240.
by wegs 6y ago
Indeed. In that case, BMJ publishes myths. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2815 Plus, there's common sense. I live in an area hit by COVID hard. About half of the people who I've heard of catching C

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