xaa

16 ms·

91.
by xaa 9y ago
You're really quite correct. Businesses are all "small government, low regulations, free market" until government, regulation, oligopoly, etc., would help them.
92.
by xaa 9y ago
I take it your point is that programmers are not fungible. So higher-quality programmers are worth more than lower-quality programmers. Sure. And when they say there is a "shortage", they mean there is a limited number of programm
93.
by xaa 9y ago
What do you mean by "aggregate shortage"? Since you reference economics: There's a supply curve, there's a demand curve, and QS/QD/price are set by where they intersect. The fallacy in this article (and in your
94.
by xaa 9y ago
I said nothing about fairness. If I thought it were practical and would help, I'd advocate outing every single one of them. I have less than zero sympathy for them. And I totally agree that it is really screwing up science. But to use
95.
by xaa 9y ago
> Continued funding will require perennial marketing to your peers. I'm not a fan of this proposal either, but how does this aspect differ from the current system, really? Who do you think reviews grant proposals? If I had a nickel
96.
by xaa 9y ago
You're really underestimating how much this happens. One incident is a drop in the bucket, and there won't be a whistleblower every time. IMO the only way to fix it, especially in CS type disciplines, is to make it a requirement f
97.
by xaa 9y ago
Ugh, shiver . I've seen a variety of "problematic" data analysis behavior by very senior people, so I have no trouble believing this story. Nor do I blame you for not elaborating to random internet people. Although it is sad
98.
by xaa 9y ago
I agree that news articles shouldn't speculate on motives and whether or not a shooting was proper in the first few days (with the possible exception of a neutral expert on these issues, such as the excellent copinthehood.com). Neverth
99.
by xaa 10y ago
Yes, that's possible. I don't think the evidence supports it, though. I agree that likely on average, as people get older, they have less time per week to devote to gaming. Although it will be interesting to see how the first gene
100.
by xaa 10y ago
There are two factors at play here. First, if you track an individual gamer over time, I think they generally will gradually prefer increasingly complex games. Not necessarily "complex" in the sense of difficulty, but in the sense
101.
by xaa 10y ago
Mostly total hours, but both. Per-player hours also follow a scale-free distribution within any given game. You are right that some games encourage more time spent than others (I don't know about whether they "attract" a cert
102.
by xaa 10y ago
To some extent, yes. But DF and ADOM are direct counterexamples to this. They have been developed for decades certainly far beyond the point where the marginal value of a dev-hour has ceased to be worthwhile. Yet development continues. On t
103.
by xaa 10y ago
There are two possible ways to measure trends in gaming. One is to look at sales, the other is to look at where the hours are being spent. So, I agree that sales of new games are extremely robust now, likely because Steam has made it easier
104.
by xaa 10y ago
I do wonder whether the future of gaming will eventually move towards a model like DF, ADOM, WoW, DOTA 2, EVE etc, whereby instead of completely new games every year that generally just feature updated graphics, we will instead see a few ga
105.
by xaa 10y ago
> There's no reasonable way to say FB should have less engineers without being a high level director of the company I'm going to assume you don't literally mean only company directors can levy logical criticisms of a compa
106.
by xaa 10y ago
I agree, and not a crazy thought. The reasons for voting of the median adult in both parties -- described as charitably as possible -- are suboptimal. The fact that children might be slightly less informed doesn't excuse the disenfra
107.
by xaa 10y ago
Good point. I work in the "relatively safe" area of academic research, but the point still holds. Even more broadly, your thought has made me wax a little philosophical about capitalism: we believe that 1) everyone should work, 2)
108.
by xaa 10y ago
I can relate to the "bittersweet Kaggle memories" phenomenon. I participated in their first-ever competition, which I thought I would have a good shot at because Kaggle was brand-new (thus not much competition), and because it was
109.
by xaa 10y ago
(Fellow CB here) I have had the same experience. Although I think this phenomenon is because of a heavily empirical bias in biology, not because the experimental data that is usually paired with comp bio models is actually all that useful i
110.
by xaa 10y ago
Well, "physics" really encompasses just about everything, including biology, so I am implicitly limiting it to things which would not fall into another, more specific field, such as engineering or meteorology. Right, word choice.
111.
by xaa 10y ago
You would think this. But actually institutes can be quite selective about what grants they take. (Usually the individual researcher would take whatever they can get) The biggest example has to do with the NIH "indirect rate". The
112.
by xaa 10y ago
At least for publicly funded research, there is no need for anyone to pay. Normally, the theory of copyright is that a creative person has to put food on the table, so they need to be paid. I acknowledge this is a tough problem in the case
113.
by xaa 10y ago
> The models used in undergraduate physics classes, or even to high school physics are not statistical. You are correct insofar as they are not presented as being statistical. But in reality, they are. Ohm's law is a good example.
114.
by xaa 10y ago
> Yes, but you're implying "predictive" means 100% accurate. No, I'm not. Or I didn't intend to, in fact I intended quite the opposite. I completely agree that "wrongness" is relative. "Wrongness&q
115.
by xaa 10y ago
Your overall point is correct, but I would add that there is no such thing as a non-statistical model or prediction in any science or aspect of physical reality IMO. For two reasons: A) reality is inherently statistical at the quantum level
116.
by xaa 10y ago
I agree that the problem is complex systems, not biology per se. But physics is able to be quite predictive because it is able to isolate one basic phenomenon at a time and model it with great precision (gravity, electromagnetism, particle
117.
by xaa 10y ago
(Bioinformatics) I wonder if he means not that evolution is false/unfalsifiable/irreproducible, but that it is not really a very predictive theory. I agree there is a lot of evidence that it happened and continues to happen, but p
118.
by xaa 10y ago
Is this somehow related to the article? The implicit assumption behind the linked study is that not all sciences are equally precise and robust. Therefore "we should always trust science" and "we should never trust science&qu
119.
by xaa 10y ago
> just to come up with the most simplistic model Yeap. Bioinformatician here. Not only are most published models overly simplistic -- which everyone acknowledges -- but I think our bigger problem is we don't even have a reasonable &
120.
by xaa 10y ago
I'm a grad student, so I'm sympathetic to these arguments, trust me. But I simply think there's no way around the fact that if you double the positions, you'll (at least) double the number of graduates. Assuming the facu

More ›