xaa

19 ms·

121.
by xaa 10y ago
Many interesting points here, but the most striking to me is how this is yet another industry that is socializing their costs by paying employees so little that they have to get food stamps, hiring people part-time so you don't have to
122.
by xaa 10y ago
Also, another reason the vaccine analogy fails is that this situation is being likened to the Guardian overemphasizing the risks of vaccines on the assumption that the only choices are "vaccine" or "no vaccine". But the
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by xaa 10y ago
> Nobody is talking about withholding information. A request for retraction is very close to a request to do just this. I will explain more below, though. > major story about vaccine risk that didn't talk to any doctors I think t
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by xaa 10y ago
As an "expert" in another area that has been invoked a few times in this thread, biology (WRT the vaccine analogy), I do sympathize with the position of tptacek and others. It is so very tempting to think that we experts not only
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by xaa 10y ago
I work in a area related to this: neural aging. Many of my collaborators are constantly looking for gender differences in the basal brain and WRT the aging process. They are encouraged to do this by a semi-recent NIH policy strongly encoura
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by xaa 10y ago
Right. I live in Oklahoma which has...a strong 2nd Amendment contingent. The OK state government is taking a lot of heat from the federal government for refusing to implement the Real ID requirements for state DLs. I'm not a conservati
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by xaa 10y ago
Also in bioinformatics, and I use Python too, but not for the same reasons. Among languages with mature statistics/ML/numeric libraries, your choices are R and Python (MATLAB/Mathematica if you're willing to consider non
128.
by xaa 10y ago
It seems this extension could be tweaked to only operate on sites with high Alexa rankings or similar to avoid this problem. That would probably be a good idea, because you make a good point. Or, it could even have two "modes": a
129.
by xaa 10y ago
There ARE jobs in biology. I have one. But IME, in fields like this, or creative fields like writing, graphic design, etc, students should know what they're getting into: extremely competitive fields where you can do very well if you&#
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by xaa 10y ago
It's difficult to interpret this because the paper defines income throughout the text in terms of income quantile (not absolute, COL-adjusted levels). And oddly, in the FT, they show a significant negative correlation b/t Gini i
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by xaa 10y ago
I had PRK because my cornea was too thin to get LASIK. Yeah, the healing wasn't fun (for me, it was really bad for about 3 days). A few very minor vision artifacts, but by far the most annoying side effect has been dry eyes. I don&#x27
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by xaa 10y ago
I think you are misreading him. I gave two possible academic definitions of racism that I had heard of, A) "discrimination plus power", and B) "systems creating unequal outcomes" (or "systems of oppression"). I
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by xaa 10y ago
I'm sorry you're getting downvoted. I'm very happy you're willing to engage with me on this. Obviously I'm somewhat familiar with this subject, but not as much as you, and it's nice to have a more detailed disc
134.
by xaa 10y ago
(TL;DR: I believe the term is being used both proscriptively and descriptively, and that is the heart of the problem) > One group yells "women belong in the kitchen; blacks are inferior" or whatever. I, and even most conservati
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by xaa 10y ago
I agree wholeheartedly with grzm. And I do believe the skepticism he is talking about has generated one positive result: if you want people to believe in expertise now, you have to not just define terms and explain reasoning, but show concr
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by xaa 10y ago
Wikipedia contains interesting sections on the etymology of both "racism" and "sexism". "Racism" (and the older term, "racialism") have been around since at least 1900. It originally seemed to have mo
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by xaa 10y ago
All you say is true, as I understand it, but there are two problems: First, social scientists are overwhelmingly liberal. Normally, I don't have a problem with an appeal to "academic circles" as I'm in them. But this is
138.
by xaa 10y ago
I would take your side on most of your bets. But I disagree with your implied conclusion that banning this type of speech is therefore OK. The reason is that it places our government (or Twitter, in this case) in a situation of making impos
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by xaa 10y ago
Agree. The first thing I thought upon reading this was: would Twitter ban an account with the following description: "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of African descent in the United States, and around the wor
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by xaa 10y ago
I agree that the "for profit" bit isn't the problem, it's the sheer size of Google. Everyone who has been paying attention has watched with dismay as Apple and "don't be evil" Google (along with other, sma
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by xaa 10y ago
I'm not saying both sides' arguments have equal merit. The problem I'm talking about is that we don't hear the arguments, facts, and logic anymore, from either side. Just name-calling and vitriol, for the most part. I am
142.
by xaa 10y ago
AFAICT, the one who brought up the Project Veritas was a European who is not very likely to fall cleanly into one "side" or another of our politics. It seemed to me to be a legitimate question for an outsider to ask: these videos
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by xaa 10y ago
Can we? Of course. Should we? I am not so sure. There are two possible kinds of ideas you could be talking about. One is ideas which have truly been tried before and have been actively and soundly rejected by the vast majority of the public
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by xaa 10y ago
I agree Trump is mostly a symptom of polarization (although I would say "what if"-based fear is more of a rhetorical tactic than a problem in itself). Bottom line: we have some very severe systemic issues that allowed Trump to get
145.
by xaa 10y ago
I'm not a Trump supporter. Actually I was a Bernie supporter. I dislike both remaining candidates, but I do try to take as charitable an interpretation of both candidates' statements as reasonably possible. I have not found it pro
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by xaa 10y ago
You are correct that all of those are rights. The question here is what is the course of action that will lead to the best outcome? People who believe YC should disassociate from Thiel are doing so based on the belief that the consequences
147.
by xaa 10y ago
> When those ideas have abhorrent real world consequences...why would we not criticize the people who hold them? I'm an academic. Academics frequently come up with ideas that have, or would have if implemented, abhorrent real-world
148.
by xaa 10y ago
Not GP, but I share his general viewpoint. My response would be: 1. I do not believe he would actually be able to do this (like the wall). Thankfully, unlike other aspects of our government, our judiciary is generally functional and indepen
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by xaa 10y ago
> one true mechanistic answer Well yes, if they thought this, they would likely be wrong. But that isn't what I was suggesting. The answer I would be looking for would be something like "A accounts for approximately 20%/50
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by xaa 10y ago
> is it understanding the underpinnings of the biology behind a particular pathway you're studying Yes, this is it. You are right that the really general basic concepts (what is DNA? how does transcription work?) are not all that ha

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