Links Archive

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"How to know and do what you actually want, not just what you think others want" [Deliberatehappiness]: "[I]t’s fine to try to make others like you. It’s just that it’s better to do it consciously. [...] If you think about pleasing people as one of your goals and pursue it on purpose, you can find paths that lead to a helluva lot more flourishing than bumbling about with your eyes closed and hoping for the best. The main method I’ve seen work for this is to do what you enjoy then find people who like and respect you for doing those things. [...] One tool I like is to imagine a scenario where nobody will ever know that you did it. [...] Do you still do it? A common example is reading the classics. If nobody ever knew you did it, would you really read Shakespeare, written in such a different English that each sentence takes forever to parse? Or would you watch an amazing drama on Netflix? Sure, Shakespeare makes timeless commentary on the human experience, but so does Game of Thrones" (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"If you're a people-pleaser, try asking this question" [Deliberatehappiness]: "When I’m in a social situation, I ask myself this question, “How do I make this interaction awesome for them and me.” Not how do I make them happy. Not how do I enjoy this situation. How do we both enjoy it. This has fantastic results, because you aren’t giving too much of yourself away. [...] See how it transforms people-pleasing into creating a shared joy." (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
You can ignore some of your goals if they are a byproduct of one of your other goals [Deliberatehappiness]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
How to be ambitious without feeling inadequate - opticontentment [Deliberatehappiness]: "Opticontentment is a term I coined because I couldn’t find a word for it in the English language. It’s a portmanteau of the words “optimizing” and “contentment” because it fuses the two concepts. It means to be optimizing, trying to improve and grow, while at the same time being content and happy with where you’re currently at. It could be characterised as replacing the sentence, “My life is good, but it could get better” with, “My life is good, and it can get even better”. What this looks like is a deep gratitude for what you’ve already done, for who you are, and wanting to do even more." (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
How to actually change your thought patterns and reduce distorted beliefs [Deliberatehappiness]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Two questions that help defuse negative emotions [Deliberatehappiness]: "When you have an emotion, first ask if it’s valid, then ask if it’s proportionate." (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
How to maintain long distance friendships instead of losing touch [Deliberatehappiness]: Regular Skypes that are scheduled in advance. IM or text a lot. Encourage spontaneous calls. (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
What is Productivity Guilt? (And How Can You Prevent It?) [Getpocket]: "Pushing yourself to be productive is good, being hard on yourself for not meeting every possible goal isn’t. You can't implement and simultaneously maintain all the advice, even if it is highly worthy of implementation. It's better to think incrementally and ask "How could I do things a little differently than last time for a little better results?" Try only working on 1-2 goals at a time. Stop comparing yourself to other people. Separate the nice-to-have from the essential." (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
The Comment Policy is Victorian Sufi Buddha Lite [SlateStarCodex]: "If you make a comment here, it had better be either true and necessary, true and kind, or kind and necessary. Recognizing that nobody can be totally sure what is or isn’t true, if you want to say something that might not be true[...] Nobody can be kind all the time, but if you are going to be angry or sarcastic, what you say had better be both true and necessary. You had better be delivering a very well-deserved smackdown against someone who is uncontroversially and obviously wrong, in a way you can back up with universally agreed-upon statistics." (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
The fake “like” factories – how we reverse engineered facebooks user IDs [Media.ccc.de]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
PGP Encrypted ProtonCalendar from ProtonMail [Protonmail]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Generalized Knights [Lemoing.ca]: "Knights in chess move in an L-shape: 2 squares in one direction and 1 square perpendicular. But what if it didn't have to be like that?" (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in random | a)
What: A terminal tool to check what is taking up your bandwidth [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
The ProtonCalendar Security Model [Protonmail]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
"Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?" [News.ycombinator]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Show HN: libcodr7 – fundamental collections in the spirit of C [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Fandom went mainstream in the 2010s — for better and worse [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in culture | a)
Game of Thrones’ final season told flattering lies about wanting power [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in culture | a)
"The rise and fall of Rudy Giuliani, explained " [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
What we know about the Hanukkah celebration stabbing in New York [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in news | a)
"What we know about a shooting at a White Settlement, Texas, church" [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in news | a)
"The controversy over Bret Stephens’s Jewish genius column, explained" [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s co-writer thinks he told Rose Tico’s complete story in barely over a minute [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
"In 2016, the Ghostbusters reboot didn’t change movies. But the backlash was a bad omen." [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
"The decade, in 6 minutes" [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in news | a)
Blue light may not be as disruptive to sleep patterns as originally thought [Manchester.ac.uk]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Scaling React Server Side Rendering [Arkwright.github.io]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Snapcast – Synchronous multi-room audio player [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Changes to accessing and using Geolite2 databases [Blog.maxmind]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective [Get21stnight]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in metascience | a)
Using an /e/ phone as a desktop or laptop [Nexedi]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Show HN: MassCode – a code snippets manager for developers [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Pedestrian routing that offers pleasant alternatives to the shortest route [Gislounge]: "Most of us are concerned about getting somewhere, usually as fast as possible, so we are accustomed to using Google Maps or similar tools we prefer for navigation to find the quickest route possible. However, we may not always want to find simply the quickest route. There are health, physical, enjoyable and even economic reasons as to why the fastest route is not optimal. Furthermore, along the route, there are other things we may prefer, such as finding places to socialize or even being surrounded by peace and quiet. New tools are beginning to make the task of finding such routes easier for us." (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
New Material to Make Lithium Ion Batteries Self-Healing and Easily Recyclable [Goodnewsnetwork]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in science | a)
"Arduino programmable air, pneumatics kit" [Blog.arduino.cc]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Show HN: Art Resources and Tutorials Website [Artres.xyz]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
ProtonMail takes aim at Google with an encrypted calendar [Venturebeat]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
The beta amyloid hypothesis has thwarted progress toward an Alzheimer’s cure [Statnews]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in science | a)
Boeing 737 Max: Automated Crashes [video] [Media.ccc.de]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Meet Dash O’Pepper [Filipeherculano.dev]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
KafkaHQ [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
"Piet, a programming language in which programs look like abstract paintings" [Dangermouse.net]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
The Joys of Unix Keyboards [Donatstudios]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Choosing a License for GoatCounter [Arp242.net]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Light – Learning in Interactive Games with Humans and Text [Parl.ai]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Encoding integers in the EMV protocol (2010) [Lightbluetouchpaper]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
The Unpredictable Cactus [Lrb.co.uk]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in science | a)
Show HN: Rewtro plays tiny videogames encoded in origami GameBoy cartridges [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
The Central Limit Theorem and Its Misuse [Lambdaclass]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in math | a)
Stop Trying to Focus: The Power of Macro-Mind Thinking [Consciouscompanymedia]: "We're told that focus is the key to productivity, but macro-mind thinking — or stepping back to see the bigger picture and give our brains a break — is just as crucial. [...] Make space for big-picture thinking: Some companies give their employees a half day once a week or once a month to pursue “moon shot” projects or just let their creative juices flow with no set agenda. [...] Go beyond mindfulness: Mindfulness has become all the rage at companies focused on promoting focus and wellbeing. [...] Do nothing: This is the advanced practice, the double-black diamond approach to developing the macro-mind. The momentum to be productive is so strong that most of us rarely, if ever, have the opportunity to do nothing." (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Trump’s use of homelessness as a political cudgel exposes his cynical disregard for blue states [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
The Decade of Swift [Swiftbysundell]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
"RIP Syd Mead (Blade Runner, TRON Designer)" [Sydmead]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in culture | a)
Publish – A static site generator for Swift developers [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
The Rise of the Architectural Cult [Inference-review]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in science | a)
US atomic waste dump in Marshall Islands to be investigated [Bbc]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in news | a)
Google Design’s Best of 2019 [Design.google]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Show HN: Ezovpn – OpenVPN configuration importer / generator in Golang [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Apple ink supplier in Japan makes mark with iPhone 11 Pro colors [Asia.nikkei]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in news | a)
Science does advance one funeral at a time [Chemistryworld]: "The study doesn’t show that superstars are bad or behave unethically, Azoulay stresses. Instead, he says, it suggests that once people reach the top, it’s difficult for them or their ideas to be dislodged. [...] Azoulay thinks researchers, policymakers, funders and publishers need to be more aware that this is happening. He calls for more policy experimentation to test whether fields should be more open to newcomers. ‘The people who are being blocked today for the right or wrong reasons may well be the people who will do the blocking tomorrow.’" (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in metascience | a)
Parameter vs Synapse? [LessWrong]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in datascience | a)
2019 AI Alignment Literature Review and Charity Comparison [LessWrong]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in effectivealtruism | a)
"Australia’s hellish heat wave and wildfires, explained" [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in news | a)
Opinions of oxfam [Reddit]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in effectivealtruism | a)
Politics Podcast: Biggest Political Moments Of 2019. Key Questions For 2020. [538]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in politicalscience | a)
Please Take The 2020 SSC Survey! [SlateStarCodex]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in news | a)
We need to revisit AI rewriting its source code [LessWrong]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Where ACE staff are giving in 2019 and why [EA Forum]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in giving | a)
Brief summary of key disagreements in AI Risk [EA Forum]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in effectivealtruism | a)
Where ACE Staff Are Giving in 2019 and Why [Animalcharityevaluators]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in giving | a)
Out in the Great Northwest [LessWrong]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in random | a)
The unexpected difficulty of comparing AlphaStar to humans [LessWrong]: "Artificial intelligence defeated a pair of professional Starcraft II players for the first time in December 2018. Although this was generally regarded as an impressive achievement, it quickly became clear that not everybody was satisfied with how the AI agent, called AlphaStar, interacted with the game, or how its creator, DeepMind, presented it. Many observers complained that, in spite of DeepMind’s claims that it performed at similar speeds to humans, AlphaStar was able to control the game with greater speed and accuracy than any human, and that this was the reason why it prevailed. Although I think this story is mostly correct, I think it is harder than it looks to compare AlphaStar’s interaction with the game to that of humans, and to determine to what extent this mattered for the outcome of the matches. Merely comparing raw numbers for actions taken per minute (the usual metric for a player’s speed) does not tell the whole story" (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Interview with Rui Pinto of Football Leaks [Spiegel.de]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in random | a)
More on polio and randomized clinical trials [LessWrong]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in metascience | a)
Chris Olah’s views on AGI safety [LessWrong]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Why is the mail so much better than the DMV? [LessWrong]: "Whether it's providing healthcare, building high speed rail, or Issuing Drivers Licenses, the typical American's experience with government services is one of incompetence, corruption and failure to innovate. There are lots of plausible explanations about why this might be. [...] Yet, there is one government service in the US on which every single person depends, which serves hundreds of millions of requests every day, and which does its job virtually flawlessly for less than its European counterparts. Every single difference mentioned above would apply just as much or more so to the USPS. [...] So, why is the mail so much better than every other government service in the US?" (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
"MIRI is only 35% of the way to its 2019 fundraising goal, with two days lef..." [Reddit]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in effectivealtruism | a)
2020's Prediction Thread [LessWrong]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in rationality | a)
What Resources on Journal Analysis are Available? [LessWrong]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Critiquing What failure looks like [Alignmentforum]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in rationality | a)
Conversation on AI risk with Adam Gleave [EA Forum]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in career | a)
Critiquing What failure looks like [LessWrong]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in rationality | a)
Allocation of discretionary funds from Q3 2019 [EA Forum]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in effectivealtruism | a)
The best New Year's resolution I ever made [EA Forum]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Animal Ethics work in 2019 [Animal-ethics]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in animals | a)
The 11 most-read Future Perfect articles of 2019 [Vox]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
What ever happened to PETRL (People for the Ethical Treatment of Reinforcem... [EA Forum]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in effectivealtruism | a)
"Video introduction to MIRI, CFAR, and AI risk" [Reddit]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in effectivealtruism | a)
2019 in review: state of the blog [Flightfromperfection]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in random | a)
Open Philanthropy Staff: Suggestions for Individual Donors (2019) [EA Forum]: NaN (
'19 Dec 29Added Sun 2019-Dec-29 11 p.m. CST
in giving | a)
"I Killed My Teenager’s Fancy College Dreams. You Should, Too." [Slate]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in -1 | a)
I asked my students to turn in their cell phones and write about living without them. [Technologyreview]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
5 Money Rules That Will Increase Your Net Worth [Getpocket]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"In Battle to Recruit New Quants, Hedge Funds Outpay Banks" [Wsj]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in career | a)
Focus has become more valuable than intelligence (2018) [Alexand.ro]: "[E]ven if you are intelligent, there is a prerequisite every single time you wake up which will decide if your intelligence will be used or wasted that day. That prerequisite is focus." (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Why are my Go executable files so large? [Cockroachlabs]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
A Desperate Plea for a Free Software Alternative to Aspera (2018) [Ccdatalab]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Ffmpeg-Python: Python bindings for FFmpeg – with complex filtering support [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019? [News.ycombinator]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in entrepreneurship | a)
IncludeOS: a minimal unikernel operating system for C++ services [Includeos]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Blind software development at 450 words per minute (2017) [Vincit.fi]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art (2015) [Dinofarmgames]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Write Junior Code [Parsonsmatt]: "Keep things simpler than you might otherwise want them to be, so that less experienced people can maintain them." (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
French court rules Steam games must be able to be resold [Engadget]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
McDonald's holds communities together (2016) [The Guardian]: "For many of the poorest, for the homeless, and for people caught in an addiction, McDonald’s are an integral part of their lives. They have cheap and filling food, they have free Wi-Fi, outlets to charge phones, and clean bathrooms. McDonald’s is also generally gracious about letting people sit quietly for long periods – longer than other fast-food places." (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Ask HN: Any Pebble Alternatives? [News.ycombinator]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
The Eternal Novice Trap [Feoh]: "Do learn new programming languages and paradigms, but learn them from a place of confidence and mastery with your primary tool of choice. Don’t fall for the trap of perpetually chasing after the bright shiny thing that’s hot right now. Recognize that what’s new isn’t necessarily better. Take what will meaningfully help you advance your career and let the rest flow by. There’ll always be more tomorrow. Do keep having fun! You’ll learn more quickly and retain more if you’re finding enjoyment in what you do. Sometimes it means looking at things a little differently, but often that open mindedness can pay off." (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
The Future of Plagiarism [Plagiarismtoday]: "Currently, plagiarism is easier to perform, easier to detect and easier to call out than ever. Furthermore, with tighter content schedules and a never-ending demand for new content, plagiarism is more tempting than ever. This has the impact of making plagiarism, or at least the detection of plagiarism, much more common. Stories like Raval are increasingly regular but that increased frequency has made it so that plagiarism seems more trivial, just another scandal in an era of scandal-obsessed media. This makes plagiarism far more survivable than it once was." (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Coinbase Wallet to remove DApp browser to comply with Apple's policy [Old.reddit]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Old Man River City – A Community Dwelling Machine [Solutions.synearth.net]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in economics | a)
Ruby Lazy Enumerators [Blog.saeloun]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log? [News.ycombinator]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
DIY ‘Meta Clock’ with 24 Analog Clocks [Mcuoneclipse]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Node-based a/v composition: programs as graphs and graphs as compositional tools [Github]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code [Feeding.cloud.geek.nz]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Nothing Says 'Hip' Like Ancient Wheat (2016) [Npr]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in economics | a)
Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project as a blueprint for living online [Reallifemag]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"Vaughan Oliver, Graphic Designer for Pixies, Cocteau Twins, and More, Dead at 62" [Pitchfork]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in random | a)
Ruby 2.x Universal RCE Deserialization Gadget Chain (2018) [Elttam]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Why Canada's cannabis bubble burst [Bbc]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in economics | a)
Show HN: A pure functional programming language targeting decentralized systems [Clio-lang]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Publishers Determined to Kill E-Books [Eclecticlight.co]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in economics | a)
The StingRay Is Why the 4th Amendment Was Written [Fee]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Ask HN: Making a mobile app as a back-end developer? [News.ycombinator]: NaN (
'19 Dec 28Added Sat 2019-Dec-28 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
The Ideological Turing Test [Econlib]: "Put me and five random liberal social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let liberal readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn’t really a liberal. Then put Krugman and five random libertarian social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let libertarian readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn’t really a libertarian. Simple as that." (
'19 Dec 27Added Fri 2019-Dec-27 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department [Newyorker]: "&ldsquo;'Home Depot Presents the Police!®' I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. 'Nobody move unless you want to!' They didn’t." (
'19 Dec 26Added Thu 2019-Dec-26 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
How to Actually Stick to Your Resolutions This Year [Youtube]: "(1) Remember that the motivation that comes from the new year is fleeting; (2) You will have the same limitations after 1 Jan than before; (3) No need to wait until Jan 1st to change - you can start now; (4) If you can't do your full goal today (e.g., practice piano for an hour) you can at least do some of it (e.g., practice piano for 15min); (5) set a resolution for a week-length time scale instead of a year-length time scale; (6) start small; (7) don't make your career/accomplishment goals more intense if you are still languishing on your health (e.g., sleep, exercise, nutrition); (8) track your progress; (9) if you fail, track why you failed and see how you can avoid it." (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Marijuana: Much More Than You Wanted to Know [SlateStarCodex]: "There is not a sufficiently obvious order-of-magnitude difference between the costs and benefits of marijuana legalization for a evidence-based utilitarian analysis of costs and benefits to inform the debate. [...W]hether marijuana legalization is positive or negative on net depends almost entirely on small changes in the road traffic accident rate. This is something I’ve never heard anyone else mention, but which in retrospect should be obvious; the few debatable health effects and the couple of people given short jail sentences absolutely can’t compare to the potential for thousands more (or fewer) traffic accidents which leave people permanently dead. [...] We should probably stop caring about health effects of marijuana and about imprisonment for marijuana-related offenses, and concentrate all of our research and political energy on how marijuana affects driving." (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
A Simple Guide to Better Coaching and Feedback in Your Company [Buffer]: "1-on-1 meetings at least every two weeks between the employee and manager. 70min long - 10min to share and celebrate achievements, 40min to discuss current top challenges, 10min for manager to share feedback, and 10min for employee to share feedback. The 1:1 is for the team member, not the CEO or team lead. It should be about listening and suggesting and emphasizing reflection, rather than commanding." (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
"Calories in, calories out" [Possiblywrong.wordpress]: "How do we lose (or gain) weight? Is it really as simple as 'calories in, calories out' (i.e., eat less than you burn), or is what you eat more important than how much? Is '3500 calories equals one poun'” a useful rule of thumb, or just a myth? [...] Following is a description of my attempt to answer some of these questions, using a relatively simple mathematical model, in an experiment involving daily measurement of weight, caloric intake, and exercise over 75 days. The results suggest that you can not only measure, but predict future weight loss– or gain– with surprising accuracy. But they also raise some interesting open questions about how all this relates to the effectiveness of some currently popular diet programs." (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Should You Do Intense Short-Term Projects or Build Long-Term Habits? [Scotthyoung]: "The two approaches are not mutually exclusive - you should aim to do both! "If it’s easier at the beginning, then habits make more sense. You want to be preparing yourself for the long-haul. If it’s easier at the end, then an intense approach makes pushing through that initial challenge more likely." Habits work well for easier goals, whereas intensity works well for harder goals. "If your habits don’t line up with the typical intensity required to reach the level of success you want, you won’t get there even if you’re perfectly consistent." Habits also work well for things you don't want to focus on, whereas intensity works well for your main focus." (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Preventing Burnout: A Cautionary Tale [Tim.blog]: "I wish someone had held up a mirror to show me I was the problem, but that never happened. No one knew the full extent of my situation but me, and I was in denial. It’s worth taking a moment to ask yourself: Do I feel guilty or anxious when I’m not working? Have I stopped playing with my friends? Do all of my daily activities revolve around building a more successful career? Am I always sleeping fewer than eight hours per night? Am I consuming stimulants multiple times per day to hide my exhaustion? Am I sitting still and staring at screens for most of my waking hours? Do I interact with people primarily through screens? Am I indoors all day long, depriving myself of fresh air and sunlight? Do I depend on alcohol or drugs to cope with social situations outside of work? If you said ‘yes’ to most of those questions, you are not alone. When I was at my worst, I was doing all of these things on a daily basis. I was fueling my own anxiety and I couldn’t even see it. My perceived lack of productivity, lack of money, and the unknown future kept me in a constant state of panic.&rdquo" (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
This Is What Happens to Your Bike After It's Stolen [Seattlemet]: "To the prepared thief, every bike rack is a buffet. You think a cable lock will keep your beloved wheels in your life. The thief knows a simple pair of aviation snips cuts through that cable like butter. You’re convinced a locker-style combination lock will outsmart a crook. He pops it in seconds with a shim—just slides it in between the body of the lock and its fishhook tip, and your bike is his. (A good bandit can make a shim in about five minutes with nothing more than a beer can and a pair of scissors.) U-locks? Routinely opened with a Bic pen jammed into the keyhole. Even with that rare unbreakable lock, a bike is no safer than its anchor; outside Guthrie Hall at the University of Washington sits a metal rack that bike thieves have sawed straight through. The components, meanwhile—the lights, seats, handlebars, derailleurs, and brakes that turn a frame into a ridable bike—can go for hundreds of dollars each on the black market. With no serial numbers, these parts, unlike frames, are untraceable." (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in random | a)
"Amazon's $23,698,655.93 book about flies" [Michaeleisen]: "On the day we discovered the million dollar prices, the copy offered by bordeebook was 1.270589 times the price of the copy offered by profnath. And now the bordeebook copy was 1.270589 times profnath again. So clearly at least one of the sellers was setting their price algorithmically in response to changes in the other’s price. I continued to watch carefully and the full pattern emerged." (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
How a Password Changed My Life [Medium]: "So there it was... This input field with a pulsating cursor, waiting for me to type a password that I’ll have to re-enter for the next 30 days. Many times during the day. [...] I'm gonna use a password to change my life. [...] My password became the indicator. My password reminded me that I shouldn’t let myself be victim of my recent break up, and that I’m strong enough to do something about it. My password became: 'Forgive@h3r' [...] That simple action changed the way I looked at my ex wife. That constant reminder that I should forgive her, led me to accept the way things happened at the end of my marriage, and embrace a new way of dealing with the depression that I was drowning into. [...] One month later, my dear exchange server asked me again to renew my password. I thought about the next thing I had to get done. My password became Quit@smoking4ever. And guess what happened. I'm not kidding you. I quit smoking overnight." (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
The Zero-Armed Bandit [Damninteresting]: "This bomb can never be dismantled or disarmed without causing an explosion. Not even by the creator. Only by proper instruction can it be moved to a safe place where it can be deliberately exploded, or where the third automatic timer can be allowed to detonate it. There are three automatic timers each set for three different explosion times. Only if you comply with the instructions in this letter will you be given instructions on how to disconnect the first two automatic timers and how to move the bomb to a place where it can be exploded safely." (
'19 Dec 25Added Wed 2019-Dec-25 11 p.m. CST
in random | a)
How to Remember Everything You Learn [Youtube]: "Watch out for the illusion of competence, where seeing information makes you feel like you know it, even when you don't. Grappling with information is what is required to help you remember it and bring it into long-term memory, otherwise it quickly disappears from short-term working memory. Avoid multitasking, distractions, and information overload. Practice recalling what you learn after you learn it. Also, try to explain the subject in simple terms to a hypothetical (or not hypothetical) person who doesn't yet understand it. Also try spaced repetition, making sure to re-learn the material after a certain amount of time." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
The Bernie vs. Warren Debate We Need [Nymag]: "Much of the time, the Democratic left is content to wage its 'Bernie vs. Warren' civil war in a parallel universe free of this context. Sanders supporters comb through the Warren campaign's every utterance on health care for intimations of agnosticism on single-payer, as though the chief obstacle to Medicare for All in 2021 will be the next Democratic president's lack of backbone rather than the fact that there are currently 14 votes for Bernie's bill in Chuck Schumer's caucus (and none of the Democrats who oppose single-payer had any trouble winning renomination in the 2018 primaries). Meanwhile, progressive intellectuals debate the relative merits of Warren's left-liberalism and Sanders's 'democratic socialism' as though the central question facing the next Democratic administration will be whether to implement the Meidner plan or settle for Denmark's model of social democracy." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
American Leftists Believed Corbyn's Inevitable Victory Would Be Their Model [Nymag]: "The British election results, like any election results, are the result of unique circumstances and multiple factors. They are also, however, a test of a widely articulated political theory that has important implications for American politics. That theory holds that Corbyn's populist left-wing platform is both necessary and sufficient in order to defeat the rising nationalist right. Corbyn's crushing defeat is a decisive refutation." I do think socialists need to contend with Corybn's large defeat and that this can't be dismissed easily, but I suppose centrists also need to contend with Hilary Clinton's defeat, and the American right needs to contend with how relatively left the UK Conservatives are" (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know [SlateStarCodex]: "Technological unemployment is not happening right now, at least not more so than previous eras. The official statistics are confusing, but they show no signs of increases in this phenomenon. On the other hand, there are signs of technological underemployment – robots taking middle-skill jobs and then pushing people into other jobs. [...] This sort of thing has been happening for centuries and in theory everyone should eventually adjust, but there are some signs that they aren't. This may have as much to do with changes to the educational, political, and economic system as with the nature of robots per se. Economists are genuinely divided on how this is going to end up, and whether this will just be a temporary blip while people develop new skills, or the new normal. Technology seems poised to disrupt lots of new industries very soon, and could replace humans entirely sometime within the next hundred years. This is a very depressing conclusion. If technology didn't cause problems, that would be great. If technology made lots of people unemployed, that would be hard to miss, and the government might eventually be willing to subsidize something like a universal basic income. But we won't get that. We'll just get people being pushed into worse and worse jobs, in a way that does not inspire widespread sympathy or collective action. The prospect of educational, social, or political intervention remains murky." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Is everything an MLM? [Annehelen.substack]: "[T]he overproduction of PhDs: too many people coming through grad school, and too few sustainable academic jobs. And as anyone in any field understands, when there's way more qualified applicants than jobs, the existing jobs can demand more of applicants (more qualifications, less money) while applicants lower their own expectations (for compensation, for benefits, for job security, for course load and service, for location). So why don't academic departments just decrease the number of PhD students they accept? Because those students have become an integral cog in the contemporary university." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in metascience | a)
Grad school is worse for public health than STDs [BenKuhn]: "I've been low-key worried about this for a while, but it boiled over recently when Eve offhandedly mentioned a department survey that showed over half of her classmates struggling with depression or anxiety. Over half! These are some of the smartest people in their field, who I'm confident would thrive in any normally-supportive (or supportive-at-all) work environment. Instead, they're riddled with anxiety and depression because they've been convinced to tie up their entire identity in being one of the lucky 10% that lands a tenure-track research job, then hung out to dry by the gatekeepers they probably thought would help them. How the hell do people think this is reasonable?" (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in metascience | a)
How would you prove you are a time-traveler from the past? [Gwern.net]: "SF/F fiction frequently considers the case of a time-traveler from the future to the past, who can prove himself by use of advanced knowledge and items from the future. In the reverse case, a time-traveler from the past to the future wishes to prove he is from the past and that time-travel is real. How can he do this when all past knowledge is already known or whose chain of custody being broken is more likely than time-travel being real? I suggest 8 methods: carbon-14 nuclear isotope dating of their body as isotopes cannot be removed; sequencing of their genome to check consistency with pedigree as human genomes cannot be synthesized or edited on a large scale; selection & mutation clocks, likewise; immune system signatures of extinct or rare diseases such as smallpox, and accumulated pollution such as heavy metals, difficult & dangerous to fake. While these proofs may not offer conclusive proof since any human system can be subverted with enough effort, they can provide enough evidence to launch research into time travel and a definitive finding." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in rationality | a)
Modern Day Zombies? The Effects of Smartphone Ownership at Denison [Onetwentyseven.blog]: "The results weigh in on the debate that people have regarding the positive and negative aspects of Smartphone usage. It is obvious that phones are deeply ingrained into our lives, but what is interesting is that the data shows that phone usage may not take away from time spent on other social activities. When it comes to homework, exercise, and going to class, spending time on ones' phone does not take away time spent on those activities. Additionally, for every hour of time spent on a Smartphone, time spent in meetings, eating (presumably with friends), and time spent with friends goes up. For all the worry about alienation and misanthropy that technology has been thought to fuel, the evidence here suggests the opposite - phone use is linked to closer links between people." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Deepen Boring Small Talk with the ABC Strategy [Advice.shinetext]: "Ask questions, build off the answer, and connect to their answer in a personal way." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Freaked Out? 3 Steps to Protect Your Phone [NYTimes]: "(Somewhat) protect your phone from intrusive location tracking by stopping location sharing with apps, stopping location sharing with Google, and disabling your phone's ad ID (yes this is a thing)." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Explain Your Extremists [Econlib]: "No matter how controversial your political views are, there are always people on 'your side' who hold a more extreme position than you do. How do you account for such people?" (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
"Justice Ginsburg: "I Am Very Much Alive" [Npr]: "There was a senator, I think it was after my pancreatic cancer, who announced, with great glee, that I was going to be dead within six months...That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now dead." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in random | a)
Free Distribution or Cost-Sharing? Evidence from a Randomized Malaria Prevention Experiment [Earth.columbia.edu]: Insecticide-treated bed nets help prevent malaria. Giving away these bed nets for free results in a higher uptake than asking people to share in the cost of subsidized nets. (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in giving | a)
Why Russian Military Expenditure is Much Higher Than Commonly Understood (as is China's) [Waronthe Rocks]: "Based on the annual average dollar-to-ruble exchange rates, Russia is typically depicted as spending in the region of $60 billion per year on its military. [However,] Russian procurement dwarfs that of most European powers combined. [...] The reason for this apparent contradiction is that the use of market exchange rates grossly understates the real volume of Russian military expenditure (and that of other countries with smaller per-capita incomes, like China). Instead, any analysis of comparative military expenditure should be based on the use of purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates rather than market exchange rates. [...] As we demonstrate, despite some shortcomings, PPP is a much more methodologically robust and defensible method of comparing defense spending across countries[. ...] Using PPP, one finds that Russia's effective military expenditure actually ranged between $150 billion and $180 billion annually over the last five years. That figure is conservative; taking into account hidden or obfuscated military expenditure, Russia may well come in at around $200 billion. [...] The gap is even narrower when one digs into the differences in how this money is spent. At nearly 50 percent of federal budget spending on national defense, a large proportion of the Russian defense budget goes to procurement and research and development. By comparison, in other countries with large defense budgets, procurement spending tends to be much lower: in India, the United States, and the United Kingdom, spending is at about 20–25 percent. Unlike some other large military spenders - for example, Saudi Arabia and India - Russia also produces most of its weaponry itself and does not buy its equipment from countries with higher costs." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in nationalsecurity | a)
What's Amazon's market share? 35% or 5%? [Ben-evans]: "Amazon is a big company, but what does that mean? How big is 'big'? What does 'dominant' or 'scale' or 'huge' mean when US retail is $6 trillion a year? Running the numbers, Amazon has about 35% of US ecommerce. But, it competes with physical retailers as well" (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
The Absurd Structure of High School [Gen.medium]: "The system's scheduling fails on every possible level. If the goal is productivity, the fractured nature of the tasks undermines efficient product. So much time is spent in transition that very little is accomplished before there is a demand to move on. If the goal is maximum content conveyed, then the system works marginally well, in that students are pretty much bombarded with detail throughout their school day. However, that breadth of content comes at the cost of depth of understanding. The fractured nature of the work, the short amount of time provided, and the speed of change all undermine learning beyond the superficial. It's shocking, really, that students learn as much as they do. [...] he solution, to me anyway, seems almost too easy. Students should have two long classes each day for six to eight weeks. They should come to school in the morning and intensely study a single subject-ancient history, a few Shakespeare plays, cell biology, a specific math concept, and so on. In the afternoon, another subject for a few more hours. When the term ends, they move on to another subject." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Productivity by Sam Altman [Blog.samaltman]: "It matters most what you work on. Have time in your schedule to regularly think about what to work on. Insofar as is possible, try to do what you like and to delegate things to people that they would like ...and insofar as it isn't possible, try to make it possible. Try to be around smart, productive, happy, and positive people. Make lots of lists, prioritize in a way that generates momentum, be relentless about getting the most important projects done, be ruthless about saying no to stuff, try to avoid meetings and conferences, block out uninterrupted time for yourself and your work, value your time and act accordingly, don't fall into the trap of productivity porn, get good sleep, exercise plenty, eat well, avoid sugar, keep junk food out of the house, ignore any and all of this advice if it doesn't work for you, and don't neglect your family and friends for the sake of productivity. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
How to be Successful by Sam Altman [Blog.samaltman]: "Aim to compound yourself exponentially. Spend a lot of time between projects thinking of the next one, but aim so that whatever you next makes your previous project look like a footnote. Success comes from "long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together." Once you've figured out your plan, be relentlessly focused on it. Work really hard and work smart as well. Have a lot of self-belief and self-confidence, but balance it out with a lot of self-awareness. Get good at sales and sell your plans. Think independently and be okay with failing many times before succeeding. Do things differently and make it easy to take risks. Build a strong network and team. Remember that people get really rich not by having high salaries but by owning things that rapidly increase in value. Make things people want at scale. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" [Paulgraham]: "One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more. There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour. [...] But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started. When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Warren and Bernie Twitter Rant [Twitter]: "OK I want to rant about Warren, Bernie, the primary election, and how the topic shifted from stuff I was passionate about to stuff that leaves me cold. [...T]he 2020 primary campaign's shift from industrial and labor reform to health care health care health care has made me pessimistic about the Democratic party's willingness and ability to change the things that really need changing in our economy." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Burnout: what is it and how to treat it? [EA Forum]: "What can you do as an Individual? Seek social support, sleep, seek clarity in your role and goals, shorten your commute, buy yourself out of work-life conflict, and keep a healthy personal runway. What can organizations do? Define clear roles and norms, provide clear feedback, provide achievable goals, facilitate social support, facilitate telecommuting and flexible work hours, facilitate sleep, provide offices (or at least cubicles), provide autonomy, find ways to measure productivity other than hours worked, and professionalize management. Vacations don't help. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"Burnout Is About Your Workplace, Not Your People" [Hbr]: "To Maslach's point, a survey of 7,500 full-time employees by Gallup found the top five reasons for burnout are: (1) Unfair treatment at work, (2) Unmanageable workload, (3) Lack of role clarity, (4) Lack of communication and support from their manager, and (5) Unreasonable time pressure. The list above clearly demonstrates that the root causes of burnout do not really lie with the individual and that they can be averted - if only leadership started their prevention strategies much further upstream." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Biased Algorithms Are Easier to Fix Than Biased People [NYTimes]: "Humans are inscrutable in a way that algorithms are not. Our explanations for our behavior are shifting and constructed after the fact. To measure racial discrimination by people, we must create controlled circumstances in the real world where only race differs. For an algorithm, we can create equally controlled just by feeding it the right data and observing its behavior. Algorithms and humans also differ on what can be done about bias once it is found." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in datascience | a)
Inherent Trade-Offs in the Fair Determination of Risk Scores [Arxiv]: "Recent discussion in the public sphere about algorithmic classification has involved tension between competing notions of what it means for a probabilistic classification to be fair to different groups. We formalize three fairness conditions that lie at the heart of these debates, and we prove that except in highly constrained special cases, there is no method that can satisfy these three conditions simultaneously. Moreover, even satisfying all three conditions approximately requires that the data lie in an approximate version of one of the constrained special cases identified by our theorem. These results suggest some of the ways in which key notions of fairness are incompatible with each other, and hence provide a framework for thinking about the trade-offs between them. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in datascience | a)
A Meta-Analysis of Overfitting in Machine Learning [Papers.nips.cc]: "We conduct the first large meta-analysis of overfitting due to test set reuse in the machine learning community. Our analysis is based on over one hundred machine learning competitions hosted on the Kaggle platform over the course of several years. In each competition, numerous practitioners repeatedly evaluated their progress against a holdout set that forms the basis of a public ranking available throughout the competition. Performance on a separate test set used only once determined the final ranking. By systematically comparing the public ranking with the final ranking, we assess how much participants adapted to the holdout set over the course of a competition. Our study shows, somewhat surprisingly, little evidence of substantial overfitting. These findings speak to the robustness of the holdout method across different data domains, loss functions, model classes, and human analysts. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in datascience | a)
What we can learn from five naturalistic field experiments that failed to shift commuter behaviour [Nature]: "Nudges, or small changes to the decision-making environment that are non-coercive and do not significantly change economic incentives but are nonetheless designed to make people change their behavior, work in a variety of domains, but not all. It helps if the task being promoted via nudge is something people have to do anyway (e.g., taxes), is unpleasant but health promoting (e.g., flu shot), has clear but delayed benefits (e.g., saving for retirement), is not a collective action problem, and is an infrequent (preferably even one-time, e.g., a capital purchase) and non-habitual behavior. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
"The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult, That's Why They Work" [Blog.supplysideliberal]: "If it isn't making you feel stupid, it isn't helping you learn. Since most people like to feel smart, they run away in terror from learning techniques that make them feel dumb. [...] What makes knowledge and understanding stick in the long run is studying in a way that guarantees that you fail and fail and fail. Testing your knowledge and understanding in ways that make you realize what you don't know is the rocky path to genuine learning. [...] There are three key activities that effectively sear what you want to learn into your long-term memory: Doing things in real life, or in a simulation as close to the real thing as possible. Flashcards done right. Building your own picture and story of the ideas." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Tale of the converted: how complex social problems have made me question the use of data in driving impact [Blogs.lse.ac.uk]: "Here's what I used to believe was the best way to drive impact: (1) Data is a powerful tool that is under-utilised in the public and social sector. (2) Powerful insights and knowledge sit in academic journals with rigorous research waiting to be applied by practitioners. (3) We need a better evidence base to understand how to allocate public and social dollars. (4) Measurement frameworks will help service providers better understand and improve their impact. (5) Outcomes should be rigorously measured and used to hold people to account. [...] As I gain more experience with social problems, however, I increasingly understand that my original beliefs about impact are flawed. [...I]n the face of complex problems our society faces, this assumption, while compelling in theory, has consistently proven itself untrue in practice. [...] (1) The increase in usage of data does not automatically lead to more impact. In fact, requiring data usage can exacerbate unhealthy power dynamics and make things worse. [...] (2) Powerful insights and knowledge sit in the minds of practitioners waiting to be enabled. [...] (3) We have invested loads into building countless evidence bases and I'm not sure anyone has ever calculated the return on those investments. [...] (4) Top-down reporting requirements restrict rather than support service providers. [...] (5) Outcomes are emergent properties of complex systems that we simply cannot force through more rigorous measuring. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in metascience | a)
"The #1 bug predictor is not technical, it's organizational complexity" [Augustl]: The distance to decision makers and the number of developers working on a project is clearly and unambiguously the issue that is the best predictor of future problems with a code base. (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
"What do executives do, anyway?" [Apenwarr.ca]: "[T]he job of an executive is: to define and enforce culture and values for their whole organization, and to ratify good decisions. That's all. Not to decide. Not to break ties. Not to set strategy. Not to be the expert on every, or any topic. Just to sit in the room while the right people make good decisions in alignment with their values. And if they do, to endorse it. And if they don't, to send them back to try again." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Turn Discussions into Blog Posts [Reducing-suffering]: "If you come up with interesting insights or detailed arguments in the course of Facebook discussions, you might consider summarizing those ideas and saving them in a standalone article for others to read. This would be a more concise and shareable way to preserve your thoughts than just linking to a long discussion thread. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom [Pnas]: "Despite active learning being recognized as a superior method of instruction in the classroom, a major recent survey found that most college STEM instructors still choose traditional teaching methods. This article addresses the long-standing question of why students and faculty remain resistant to active learning. Comparing passive lectures with active learning using a randomized experimental approach and identical course materials, we find that students in the active classroom learn more, but they feel like they learn less. We show that this negative correlation is caused in part by the increased cognitive effort required during active learning. Faculty who adopt active learning are encouraged to intervene and address this misperception, and we describe a successful example of such an intervention." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Equal Parenting Advice for Dads [Jefftk]: "Pregnancy and birth are very asymmetric, and then breastfeeding continues the pattern: nursing isn't going to be equitable. [...] Then with parental leave it's very common for the mother to take more time off work than the father. [...] If you're the dad, what can you do? I see two main aspects: sharing the work, and sharing the parenting. From a work perspective, in as much as you want to be trying to make things fair you should be making up for the things you can't do by taking on more of the remaining work: non-feeding care, diapers, cooking, etc. [...] The other aspect is you want to be dividing the parenting, not just the work. This is because you really need to avoid a situation where the mother has a much better understanding of the baby than you do. For example, you can get into a cycle where you can't calm the baby as well, they spend more time with their mother, you get less experience and practice with them, and your relative abilities with the baby get farther and farther apart." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Why software projects take longer than you think: a statistical model [Erikbern]: "If my model is right (a big if) then here's what we can learn: People estimate the median completion time well, but not the mean. The mean turns out to be substantially worse than the median, due to the distribution being skewed (log-normally). When you add up the estimates for n tasks, things get even worse. Tasks with the most uncertainty (rather the biggest size) can often dominate the mean time it takes to complete all tasks." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Reasoning Transparency [Openphilanthropy]: "Open with a linked summary of key takeaways. Throughout a document, indicate which considerations are most important to your key takeaways. Throughout a document, indicate how confident you are in major claims, and what support you have for them." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in rationality | a)
There's No Speed Limit [Sivers]: "I graduated from Berklee and taught there, too. I’ll bet I can teach you two years of theory and arranging in only a few lessons. I suspect you can graduate in two years if you understand there’s no speed limit. Come by my studio at 9:00 tomorrow for your first lesson, if you’re interested. No charge.&rquo;" (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Evaluating the performance of past climate model projections [Agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley]: "Climate models provide an important way to understand future changes in the Earth's climate. In this paper we undertake a thorough evaluation of the performance of various climate models published between the early 1970s and the late 2000s. Specifically, we look at how well models project global warming in the years after they were published by comparing them to observed temperature changes. Model projections rely on two things to accurately match observations: accurate modeling of climate physics, and accurate assumptions around future emissions of CO2 and other factors affecting the climate. The best physics‐based model will still be inaccurate if it is driven by future changes in emissions that differ from reality. To account for this, we look at how the relationship between temperature and atmospheric CO2 (and other climate drivers) differs between models and observations. We find that climate models published over the past five decades were generally quite accurate in predicting global warming in the years after publication, particularly when accounting for differences between modeled and actual changes in atmospheric CO2 and other climate drivers. This research should help resolve public confusion around the performance of past climate modeling efforts, and increases our confidence that models are accurately projecting global warming.&rquo;" (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Why I Doubted Facebook Could Build a Billion Dollar Business and What I Learned From Being Horribly Wrong [Andrewchen.co]: "The concrete lesson to be learned from this is: In the modern era, business models are a commodity. I never want to hear about people asking, 'But what’s their business model?' because in a world where you can grow a user base of 1 billion in a few years, displaying remnant ads and getting a $0.25 CPM will do. Or just throw some freemium model on it, and monetize 1% of them. If you can build the audience, you can build a big business. The more abstract lesson to learn is: Be humble, and keep an open mind towards weird new companies. After a few years in Silicon Valley, you can gather a lot of useful heuristics about what’s worked and what doesn’t work. That will help you most of the time, but when it comes to the exceptional cases, all bets are off. [...] Remember that you’re helping/investing/working for the company right in front you, not a mutual fund of all companies with that characteristic!" (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in entrepreneurship | a)
Conflict vs. Mistake [SlateStarCodex]: "Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. The State is diseased. We’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure. Some of us have good ideas, others have bad ideas that wouldn’t help, or that would cause too many side effects. Conflict theorists treat politics as war. Different blocs with different interests are forever fighting to determine whether the State exists to enrich the Elites or to help the People." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
Mistake Theory Socialism [Danwahl.github.io]: "I dislike it when people use terms to describe what they’re not instead of what they are, but after covering two rounds of political controversies surrounding Lori Lightfoot, I want a term to at least describe the kind of progressive I aspire not to be. The closest I can come up with is 'conflict theory socialist', which is probably in the Authoritarian Left quadrant of the traditional political compass, or on top of John Nerst’s tilted political compass. Lightfoot’s budget is the kind of incremental improvement that’s stereotypically eschewed by socialists, but it feels like more than just socialism that is driving her harshest critics, and conflict theory seems to explain the remainder of the variance. I think Lightfoot’s biggest mistake in this process was probably her initial, premature promise to reopen the clinics, which gave her political opponents fodder come budget time, but (if I’m right about conflict theory) had little chance of winning them over." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
"Razer CEO Berated And Threatened His Staff, Former Employees Say" [Kotaku]: "Former Razer employees said they were expected to sacrifice their relationships with their families in order to succeed at the company, too. 'I didn’t deny my family in obvious enough ways to satisfy Min,' said Alain Mazer in an interview with Kotaku. 'My Razer career ended the day I didn’t ask for his permission to be a good parent and partner. He demands that employees reserve that kind of devotion only for him and his family’s business interests.' One former employee said their son was admitted to the ER after a car crash. While he was still in the hospital, they said, their boss told them to get back to work. Another said he was asked to work on his honeymoon. When asked about this, a Razer representative told Kotaku that they are a 'family-friendly employer,' and have adopted policies aimed at supporting employees with families." (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
You are what you document [Ybrikman]: "Good documentation is necessary for ensuring people will actually use the code that you wrote, regardless of how good that code is. A good README is most important, and it should involve a short 'sales pitch', quick examples, and installation instructions. The second best thing, if you have time, is an interactive tutorial. After that foundation is laid, good code, literate documentation, commented code, and full API docs form the next level of documentation. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Best Cold Email [Twitter]: "Good cold emails clarify that the email is someone who is human and reaching out to you in particular and knows you well. It makes a clear offer early, has humor, answers obvious objections, and has an unambiguous next call to action. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Remote vs Co-located Work [Martinfowler]: "There isn't a simple dichotomy of remote versus co-located work, instead there are several patterns of distribution for teams each of which has different trade-offs and effective techniques suitable for them. While it's impossible to determine conclusive evidence, my sense is that most groups are more productive working in a co-located manner. But you can build a more productive team by using a distributed working model, because it gives you access to a wider talent pool. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Libertarian Social Justice Warrior: A Surprisingly Coherent Position [Thingofthings.wordpress]: "It looks like 'social justice warrior' philosophy could be very compatible with libertarian philosophy. I don't endorse all of this (or anything in particular), but it's interesting. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
Unintuitive Things I've Learned About Management [Medium]: "You must like dealing with people to be great at management -- Imagine you spend a full day in back-to-back 1:1s talking to people. Does that sound awful or awesome? The manager's strength is proportional to the team, and motivating the team to find the answers is more of the goal than having all the answers yourself. Good managers need to remind the team *why* things are done more often than *how*, to create motivation. Sometimes good people don't work out on good teams, you usually will only regret moving on from a struggling person too late not too early. Respect for a manager is more important than approval. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Why Millions of Americans own the AR-15 [Vox]: "The AR-15 is reliable, easy-to-use hardware that can be customized to a lot of different purposes. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
The 10x developer is NOT a myth [Ybrikman]: "10x developers are star programmers just like how there are star athletes, star book authors, and star artists. They don't do 10x more work, but they make the right decisions about 10x more often. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Go Corporate or Go Home [Ribbonfarm]: "Startups lose their flat, flexible structure for rigid bureaucracies because it gives the company legibility, allowing people to understand how the company works and who they can talk to in order to solve certain problems. Corporate growth ends up surprisingly informed by graph theory. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
The Critical 7 Rules to Understand People [Scotthyoung]: "People are mostly focused on themselves, which means if someone hurts you it's likely unintentional, embarrassment is rarely warranted, and you're the one who has to initiate relationships. People often hide the intentions behind their actions, which means you have to focus on empathy as well as merely understanding people. Altruism exists but is often selfish altruism, such as economic transactions, familial bonds, status seeking, and reciprocity. People have poor memories and everyone is emotional. Also, people are lonely.&rquo;" (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
How to ACE Your YCombinator Interview [Hackernoon]: "Focus on quick, concise, rehersed answers; know the 3-5 most important parts of your business/team and make sure those come out, know the industry around your domain and prepare well, make sure the entire founding team speaks equally, have a demo ready but don't expect to show it. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in entrepreneurship | a)
What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team [NYTimes]: "After considering many possible hypotheses and doing years of research, Google researchers found that the best teams are those with psychological safety, where people feel free to raise ideas without getting shot down and people aren't afraid to make mistakes. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Thoughts on Building Weatherproof Companies [Medium]: "Companies involve learning fast and soliciting constant, systemic, and unequivocal feedback. You have to hire from the outside for expertise you don't have yet. You need a clearly stated and clearly understood corporate culture. A board of directors with regular, uncancellable meetings featuring real data also seems useful. Same with 1-1s with the board of directors. You also need regular interactions with customers. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
A conversation with Professor David Chalmers about Consciousness [Openphilanthropy]: "To disprove nonhuman consciousness one would need to demonstrate a necessary condition for consciousness and point out that nonhumans do not have it. To prove nonhuman consciousness one would need to point out a sufficient condition for consciousness and show that a nonhuman does have it. The second task seems easier, but could end up proving too much. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in philosophy | a)
Why the Syria Civil War Will Get Worse [Mobile.nytimes]: "Civil wars generally last a lot longer when both sides are backed by foreign powers, because the sides of the civil war never run out of resources and the foreign powers don't face popular will to end the war since they're removed from the situation. Syria is also worse because the underlying battle is multiparty rather than two-sided and has multiple foreign backers for each side, making a ceasefire much harder to negotiate. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in nationalsecurity | a)
Optimal Team Size [Johndcook]: "Adding a person to a team can make the work go faster, if that work can be done in parallel and if that person does more than they take in added communication and support cost. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Science isn't Broken [538]: "Science isn't a magic process that converts everything into truth. Doing good science is hard. While science may be uncertain and unsettled, it is superior to a lot of other methods, and requires careful analysis and replication. " (
'19 Dec 24Added Tue 2019-Dec-24 11 p.m. CST
in metascience | a)
A Parody of Every TED Talk Ever [Nan]: Not only is it a good parody of TED but also a good review of presenting style. (
'19 Dec 23Added Mon 2019-Dec-23 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Emotional Baggage [Nan]: A cautionary tale of how not to run a company. (
'19 Dec 22Added Sun 2019-Dec-22 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Everything Is 100% off If You Don't Buy It [Nan]: " "I do, however, have a suggestion: Pause. Wait before that next purchase. Avoid the mall, the online shopping carts, the sale prices. You can't save money by spending money. Everything is 100% off if you don't buy it. Instead of consuming more, why not create something worthwhile." (
'19 Dec 21Added Sat 2019-Dec-21 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"Sorry, you can't speed read" [Nan]: " The fundamental limitation of reading speed is how quickly you can comprehend words into meaning, which cannot be substantially increased using speed reading tricks. Skimming (such as by only reading the first half of each paragraph), however, can be beneficial for quickly getting a decent understanding of something." (
'19 Dec 20Added Fri 2019-Dec-20 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Melatonin - Much More Than You Wanted to Know [Nan]: " "To treat delayed phase sleep disorder (ie you go to bed too late and wake up too late, and you want it to be earlier): Take melatonin 9 hours after wake and 7 before sleep, eg 5 PM, Block blue light (eg with blue-blocker sunglasses or f.lux) after sunset, Expose yourself to bright blue light (sunlight if possible, dawn simulator or light boxes if not) early in the morning, Get early morning exercise […] To treat advanced phase sleep disorder (ie you go to bed too early and wake up too early, and you want it to be later): Take melatonin immediately after waking, Block blue light (eg with blue-blocker sunglasses or f.lux) early in the morning, Expose yourself to bright blue light (sunlight if possible, light boxes if not) in the evening, Get late evening exercise. […] These don't 'cure' the condition permanently; you have to keep doing them every day, or your circadian rhythm will snap back to its natural pattern. What is the correct dose for these indications? Here there is a lot more controversy than the hypnotic dose. Of the nine studies van Geijlswijk describes, seven have doses of 5 mg, which suggests this is something of a standard for this purpose. But the only study to compare different doses directly (Mundey et al 2005) found no difference between a 0.3 and 3.0 mg dose. The Cochrane Review on jet lag, which we'll see is the same process, similarly finds no difference between 0.5 and 5.0." (
'19 Dec 19Added Thu 2019-Dec-19 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
How to Increase Taxes on the Rich (If You Must) [Nan]: " "Finally, I should note that the safety net described by either plan A or plan B is just a version of the negative income tax that Milton Friedman proposed in his book Capitalism and Freedom back in 1962. I remember reading about it as a student 40 years ago and thinking it was a good idea. And I was not alone in that judgment: In 1968, more than 1000 economists signed a letter endorsing such a plan, including luminaries like James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, Peter Diamond, and Martin Feldstein. Andrew Yang's version, which focuses on taxing consumption rather than income, is even better than Friedman's, because it wouldn't distort the incentive to save and invest." (
'19 Dec 18Added Wed 2019-Dec-18 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Income Share Agreements [Nan]: " "In an ISA, a student borrows nothing but rather has his or her education supported by an investor, in return for a contract to pay a specified percentage of income for a fixed number of years after graduation. Rates and time vary with the discipline of the degree achieved and the amount of tuition assistance the student obtained. An ISA is dramatically more student-friendly than a loan. All the risk shifts from the student to the investing entity; if a career starts slowly, or not at all, the student's obligation drops or goes to zero. Think of an ISA as equity instead of debt, or as working one's way through college - after college. […] If you watch Shark Tank the entrepreneurs are always wary about debt because debt puts all the risk on them and requires fixed payments regardless. Yet when it comes to financing the venture of one's own life suddenly equity becomes akin to slavery and debt bondage becomes freedom! It's very peculiar. Another advantage of ISAs is that they provide feedback. Is the university willing to educate you for free in return for a share of future earnings? That's a good signal!" (
'19 Dec 17Added Tue 2019-Dec-17 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
How to increase your odds of starting a career in charity entrepreneurship [Nan]: " "Most people's lives neither encourage nor support self-direction. Typical education models always tell you what to do, where to be, and how well you're doing. Same goes for the usual job, with a manager who will fire you if you don't do the things they tell you to do, to a certain standard, by a certain date. You may have some flexibility within that framework, but the scope for action is relatively narrow. Entrepreneurship is entirely different. You are staring at a blank canvas. The only external accountability you have is in the distant future." (
'19 Dec 16Added Mon 2019-Dec-16 11 p.m. CST
in career | a)
There Aren't As Many 100% Anti-Abortion People as You Might Think [Nan]: " "very few Americans (of either party) are completely opposed to abortion. For Democrats the share was just over six percent in 1972, but it's dropped in half by 2018. For Republicans the climb has been upward, with just under 5% being totally opposed to abortion in 1972 compared to 8.5% of Republicans in 2018. […T]he share of Republicans who wanted to place no restrictions on abortion was the same as the Democrats in the 1970's. Then, support for that position began to drop. However, the decline was much steeper for Republicans - 40% of Republican were totally pro-choice in the 1970's, but that fell to just under 15% by the mid-2000's, only to rebound about five percentage points recently. The Democrats have seen a slightly different pattern. From their high of 37% completely pro-choice in the early 1970's, they dropped to just above 20% in the mid-2000's. There was a big bounce back for Democrats, though. Now about 35% of Democrats could be called completely pro-choice. The gap between two parties on the 100% pro-choice group is now the largest it's ever been, with Democrats being twice as likely to always favor abortion than Republicans. One would have to think that an individual's view of abortion is based, in large part, on their religious tradition. The data largely confirms that, but there are some interesting results. Of the group of people who favor a woman's choice to an abortion in all six scenarios, just over a third are religiously unaffiliated. However, the group that shows up the second most is Catholics. Obviously, that's a function of the size of the Catholic population in the United States, but it also speaks to the fact that lots of Catholics are diametrically opposed to the Church's teaching on abortion. That comes even more into focus when considering that despite the fact that evangelicals made up nearly a quarter of the sample, they are just 12.7% of 100% pro-choice respondents. When looking at those who are 100% pro-life, it's basically evangelicals, Catholics, and then everyone else. Nearly half of all 100% pro-life people are evangelicals, while 30% are Catholics." (
'19 Dec 15Added Sun 2019-Dec-15 11 p.m. CST
in politicalscience | a)
Uber Self-Driving Crash [Nan]: " "A year and a half ago an Uber self-driving car hit and killed Elaine Herzberg. […] If it were a company I trusted more than Uber I would say 'at least two things going wrong, like not being able to identify a person pushing a bike and then not being cautious enough about unknown input' but with Uber I think they may be just aggressively pushing out immature tech." (
'19 Dec 14Added Sat 2019-Dec-14 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
"If Republicans Ever Turn On Trump, It'll Happen All At Once" [Nan]: " "So now begins the reading of the tea leaves and the careful scrutiny of every Republican senator's statements (or silence). Will Republicans finally break with Trump? We may not know until it happens. But be forewarned - if it does happen, it will likely take us by surprise. After all, political science has shown us that big political changes often come suddenly, after long periods of stasis. Looking back, it seems like of course the Soviet Union was bound to collapse. But up until the moment it did - and remember, it fell all at once - almost nobody predicted it." (
'19 Dec 13Added Fri 2019-Dec-13 11 p.m. CST
in activism | a)
"Prof Cass Sunstein on how social change happens, and why it's so often abrupt & unpredictable" [Nan]: " "How can a society that so recently seemed to support the status quo bring about change in years, months, or even weeks? Sunstein, co-author of Nudge, Obama White House official, and by far the most cited legal scholar of the late 2000s, aims to unravel the mystery and figure out the implications in his new book How Change Happens. He pulls together three phenomena which social scientists have studied in recent decades: preference falsification, variable thresholds for action, and group polarisation. If Sunstein is to be believed, together these are a cocktail for social shifts that are chaotic and fundamentally unpredictable. In brief, people constantly misrepresent their true views, even to close friends and family. They themselves aren't quite sure how socially acceptable their feelings would have to become before they revealed them or joined a campaign for change. And a chance meeting between a few strangers can be the spark that radicalises a handful of people who then find a message that can spread their beliefs to millions. According to Sunstein, it's "much, much easier" to create social change when large numbers of people secretly or latently agree with you. But 'preference falsification' is so pervasive that it's no simple matter to figure out when they do." (
'19 Dec 12Added Thu 2019-Dec-12 11 p.m. CST
in activism | a)
Why Am I Right-Handed? [Nan]: " Personally, I'm left-handed. But the reason why is not just simple genetics… turns out it is a lot more complicated and basically still not understood." (
'19 Dec 11Added Wed 2019-Dec-11 11 p.m. CST
in science | a)
"You Must Try, and Then You Must Ask" [Nan]: " When you get stuck, work for fifteen more minutes - no more and no less - before asking for help." (
'19 Dec 10Added Tue 2019-Dec-10 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Some Groups of People Who May Not 100% Deserve Our Eternal Scorn [Nan]: " "Look. Hamilton was a pretty good Broadway play. It wasn't the best thing that ever happened. It didn't single-handedly reinvent America. On the other hand, it's also not the source of all evil." (
'19 Dec 09Added Mon 2019-Dec-09 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
Is Elon Musk preparing for state failure? [Nan]: " "Solar panels, for example, are a necessity when the state can't deliver power reliably, as is now the case in California. Solar panels plus the Tesla give you mobility, even if Saudi Arabia goes up in smoke and world shipping lines are shut down. Starlink, Musk's plan for 12,000 or more cheap, high-speed internet satellites, will free the internet from reliance on any terrestrial government. Musk's latest venture, the truck, certainly fits the theme and even if the demonstration didn't go as well as planned isn't it interesting that the truck is advertised as bulletproof." (
'19 Dec 08Added Sun 2019-Dec-08 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
The Woozle Effect [Nan]: "Also known as evidence by citation, or a woozle, occurs when frequent citation of previous publications that lack evidence misleads individuals, groups, and the public into thinking or believing there is evidence, and nonfacts become urban myths and factoids." (
'19 Dec 07Added Sat 2019-Dec-07 11 p.m. CST
in rationality | a)
I'll Quit Ice Cream Last [Nan]: " "Most people do not 'practice the fundamentals' in areas that come easily and natural to them. They only research and design training programs in areas where they're struggling. I believe this is a mistake. Someone with excellent money management skills will often not study and tune-up in that area, because it's already 'above the bar' for them - they're happy with that area. If they're struggling with diet, they'll try to make meal plans and nutrition logs and whatever - all good stuff, really - but keep falling off and failing. The person who naturally eats well and struggles with money does the opposite. They don't go deep into nutrition and eating, because they're happy there. Meanwhile, they keep trying to put together budgets, track spending, pay more attention to money - all good stuff, really - but keep falling off and failing. I recommend you do the opposite: learn fundamentals of self-management, tracking, learning, and improvement in an easy and naturally-skilled area for you first. Then, and only then, do you apply your newly mastered self-management skills to the most difficult area." (
'19 Dec 06Added Fri 2019-Dec-06 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Orchestrating false beliefs about gender discrimination [Nan]: " "For instance, there is that study about classical orchestras, where blind auditions massively increased the chance of women to get hired. […] I have not once heard anything skeptical said about that study, and it is published in a fine journal. So one would think it is a solid result. […However], this study presents no statistically significant evidence that blind auditions increase the chances of female applicants. In my reading, the unadjusted results seem to weakly indicate the opposite, that male applicants have a slightly increased chance in blind auditions; but this advantage disappears with controls." (
'19 Dec 05Added Thu 2019-Dec-05 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
Book Review: Barrier to Bioweapons [Nan]: " It turns out that making bioweapons is really hard. It might become less hard in the future though, which is worrying." (
'19 Dec 04Added Wed 2019-Dec-04 11 p.m. CST
in nationalsecurity | a)
"10 lessons for Disney, Apple, and all the new streaming companies trying to take down Netflix" [Nan]: " "We don't know how the fight will turn out, but we do know some things about running subscription video services because we've been in that business ourselves. The most important thing to remember is that success in subscription video services requires two things: Getting a subscriber, and keeping a subscriber. The second is harder. Much harder. And since we are giving out free advice, here are 10 tips for the current and future contenders: 1. Spend today on the content library that will make financial sense five years from now. […, ] 2. The only arbiters of the quality of your content and service is the audience. […] Audiences like content that is "bad." They even like pretending they don't like certain content and will go out of their way to complain about it. […] You probably need more content than you think. If your audience isn't complaining about having too many series they want to watch, they'll pause their subscription and come back when you have them. […] At a certain point, the value of unwatched content is negative, not zero. […] You don't need sophisticated metrics to tell if your audience likes your content. All you need to know is, "Are they coming back?" The more complicated the analysis, the more likely it has been exaggerated. 3. The best way to build your streaming subscription service is to rebrand and cannibalize another business that already has lots of users and, ideally, money. […] 4. If you actually want to make money, subscription streaming shouldn't even be your real business. Instead, give it away as a free or low-cost perk that's part of a much higher-margin and less-competitive business, such as wireless service, smartphones, e-commerce subscriptions, or theme park passes. […] 6. Ultimately, you need hits. A single breakout can double your subscriber growth (though again, you'll need more hits to keep these subscribers), but a bunch of niche "hits" makes only for a niche service. Unfortunately, these hits are hard to produce and even harder to predict. So when you think you've got one, pay whatever it takes to get the rights, reshoot a pilot, or fix the creative. […] 9. To be successful, you have to solve a problem. This cannot be a problem you created. A few hardcore fans might chase Jim and Pam across the streaming landscape, but most will just watch something other than The Office. But if you say, "We are the home for all things Marvel," they'll happily choose you over sifting through Triple Frontier and The Ridiculous Six to find Thor: Ragnarok." (
'19 Dec 03Added Tue 2019-Dec-03 11 p.m. CST
in entrepreneurship | a)
Why and how to start a for-profit company serving emerging markets [Nan]: " "Wave's mission is to improve the world, not to make money. Despite that, we operate more like a tech company than a social enterprise. Our investors are venture capitalists trying to make a high return, and they hold us to the same standards of growth rate and unit economics as any developed-world startup. This might seem like a downside (surely it would be easier to directly optimize for impact rather than have pressure from investors to make money?), but for us it's actually increased our impact in two ways. First, the pressure to grow quickly forces us to make our product better and scale faster, so we help more people by a larger amount. Second, since we've done really well by for-profit investors' standards, we can raise much more money than a nonprofit or social enterprise. […] The "local context plus high standards" theory suggests a simple (though not easy!) strategy to build a high-quality business that helps the global poor: (1) Move to a developing country to understand your future users, (2) Learn the startup playbook (for instance, by doing Y Combinator), (3) Start a business whose users are in the place you live. The remainder of this post fleshes out this strategy." (
'19 Dec 02Added Mon 2019-Dec-02 11 p.m. CST
in entrepreneurship | a)
What is the Morning Writing Effect? [Nan]: " "Ericsson 1993 notes that many major writers or researchers prioritized writing by making it the first activity of their day, often getting up early in the morning. This is based largely on writers anecdotally reporting they write best first thing early in the morning, apparently even if they are not morning people, although there is some additional survey/software-logging evidence of morning writing being effective. I compile all the anecdotes of writers discussing their writing times I have come across thus far. Do they, and why?" It appears that while the morning affect does seem substantiated by a survey of anecdotal evidence, there isn't much theoretical basis for it and just pure "deep work" might be what matters most." (
'19 Dec 01Added Sun 2019-Dec-01 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
They Voted Democratic. Now They Support Trump [Nan]: " "The results suggest that the party's winning formula in last year's midterms may not be so easy to replicate in a presidential election. The Democrats' relatively moderate House candidates succeeded in large part by flipping a crucial segment of voters who backed the president in 2016. […] Voters often think differently about state and national issues. Some said they had voted for their local Democrat in the midterms because the person had served well for a long time, or because the candidate's policies would directly help their community. But presidential politics were another story, they said. Many of the white working-class voters in the Rust Belt who supported the president in 2016 were traditionally Democratic voters who backed President Obama in 2012 and even continued to vote Democratic down-ballot in 2016. Democrats generally held on to these voters in 2018, but the reasons many of them voted for Mr. Trump, like his promises on immigration or the economy, could still be relevant." (
'19 Nov 30Added Sat 2019-Nov-30 11 p.m. CST
in politicalscience | a)
"I Have No Idea What "Hard Work" Means" [Nan]: " "Instead of saying 'I worked hard' (compared to whom?), how about saying: 'I worked.' The act of working itself, even if you just clock in most days, put in minimal effort, come home, and never smile at anyone, is still a massive imposition on your life. You should not have to claim some unusual level of diligence to feel entitled to a good standard of living. […] If there were some sort of way of quantifying 'hard work,' through which you could prove that your wealth was truly earned, is there any possible way one could show that they had 'earned' a billion dollars? Do billionaires work that many magnitudes more hours than waitresses? Is their work that many magnitudes more strenuous? Are they that many magnitudes more stressed? (Billionaires might believe so; that just shows they've never been waitresses.) Brandishing the concept of "hard work" in order to justify why some people live in miserable poverty and others have sports car collections is just nonsensical, an obvious distraction away from the question of why these disparities are so vast and unjust. Honestly, "hard work" is such a vague and slippery concept that we'd probably all be better off if we just threw it out. And once we stop playing this pointless game of comparing how hard we all work, we can start asking the real question of when we're going to start being compensated fairly for it." (
'19 Nov 29Added Fri 2019-Nov-29 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
New Atheism - The Godlessness that Failed [Nan]: " "We woke up one morning and the atheist bloggers had all quietly became social justice bloggers. Nothing else had changed because nothing else had to; the underlying itch being scratched was the same. They just had to CTRL+F and replace a couple of keywords. Eventually, things came full circle. I started this essay with a memory of noticing that my favorite early-2000s-era website had two off-topic forums: one for religion vs. atheism, and one for everything else. Earlier this year, SSC's subreddit split in two: one for "culture war" discussions mostly about race and gender, the other for everything else. […] I've lost the exact quote, but a famous historian once said that we learn history to keep us from taking the present too seriously. This isn't to say the problems of the present aren't serious. Just that history helps us avoid getting too dazzled by current trends, or too swept away by any particular narrative. If this is true, we might do well to study the history of New Atheism a little more seriously." (
'19 Nov 28Added Thu 2019-Nov-28 11 p.m. CST
in activism | a)
The Radicalism of Equal Opportunity [Nan]: " "You will often hear a distinction drawn between two different kinds of equality: equality of 'opportunity' and equality of 'outcome.' The people who draw this distinction often say that they believe in the former but not the latter. Equality of 'opportunity' is desirable, but equality of 'outcome' is not. As they frame it, one of these is fairly basic while the other is radical and frightening. […] The people who distinguish opportunity and outcome often do so in order to discourage us from trying to redistribute wealth from rich to poor-what matters is not whether people end up highly unequal, but whether they have the same opportunities at the start. If life is a race, it's okay if there are 'winners' and 'losers' so long as the race is played fairly. […] But there are severe problems with this way of looking at things. For one, it makes no sense. It sounds nice, but when you start examining it closely, the boundaries between 'opportunity' and 'outcome' become very unclear. One generation's outcomes structure the next generation's opportunities. Let's say we start with a fair economic 'race,' but then a few people become much richer than others. Those people can send their children to private schools, they can pass on all of their connections and knowledge and wealth to their children. Even if Generation A has equal opportunities, Generation A's unequal outcomes mean that Generation B will have dramatic variations in opportunities. If you want to create equal opportunities, you'll have to constantly be meddling with outcomes." (
'19 Nov 27Added Wed 2019-Nov-27 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
You Draw It: What Got Better or Worse During Obama's Presidency [Nan]: Draw your guesses on the charts below to see if you're as smart as you think you are. (
'19 Nov 26Added Tue 2019-Nov-26 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
US Commutes Reveal New Economic Megaregions [Nan]: " "An ever increasing share of the world's population is living in what are known as megaregions-clusters of interconnected cities. […] Now, researchers have attempted to map the megaregions of the contiguous United States by studying the commutes of American workers." (
'19 Nov 25Added Mon 2019-Nov-25 11 p.m. CST
in economics | a)
Ground Morality in Party Politics [Nan]: We can use factor analysis to empirically demonstrate a left vs. right divide in politics. Could we use it to empirically demonstrate a good vs. bad divide in ethics? (
'19 Nov 24Added Sun 2019-Nov-24 11 p.m. CST
in ethics | a)
Tracking public opinion with biased polls [Nan]: " Polls with unrepresentative sample groups can be extrapolated to measure true popular opinion as long as enough pre-existing information is known about the distribution of how different sample groups answer the question (e.g., pre-existing presidential election surveys)." (
'19 Nov 23Added Sat 2019-Nov-23 11 p.m. CST
in politicalscience | a)
Wealth Advice that Should Be Obvious [Nan]: " Never gamble to earn money, never eat out solely for food, buy freedom instead of luxuries, don't buy stuff if you're in debt, don't buy stuff if you don't need it, sell stuff instead of paying to have it stored, put your bills on automatic, stock up when things are on sale." (
'19 Nov 22Added Fri 2019-Nov-22 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Advice for Students on Earning to Give [Nan]: " Go to as prestigious as a college as possible, major in computer science and some other quantitative subject, get as many internships as possible, network extensively, and then pick a high-earning career in finance, software engineering, management consulting, or creating a start-up. Don't get a PhD." (
'19 Nov 21Added Thu 2019-Nov-21 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
The Software Engineer's Guide to Negotiating a Raise [Nan]: " You should ask for a raise after doing extensive research on the value you provide to the company, the costs the company faces in replacing you, and how much of a raise you could get by finding a job elsewhere." (
'19 Nov 20Added Wed 2019-Nov-20 11 p.m. CST
in career | a)
Salary Negotiation [Nan]: " How to avoid the "what is your desired salary?" question (skillfully dodging the question by instead talking about the value you will bring and not giving up salary numbers), how to trade off across multiple axes (salary, vacation days, equity, etc) when doing a salary negotiation (valuing salary the most but negotiating on other things when salary is topped up), and how to get raises after being hired (emphasize the value and growth trajectory that you're on)." (
'19 Nov 19Added Tue 2019-Nov-19 11 p.m. CST
in career | a)
Philanthropic Focus vs. Abandonment [Nan]: " Focusing on the most cost-effective ways to improve lives is not unfair to those who have more cost-ineffective needs, since treating them would involve ignoring many more people." (
'19 Nov 18Added Mon 2019-Nov-18 11 p.m. CST
in giving | a)
How Technology Hijacks People's Minds - from a Magician and Google's Design Ethicist [Nan]: " Technology exploits us by creating a menu of choices that gives the illusion of choice while excluding the things not on the menu, creating thrilling anticipation of random notifications like a slot machine, giving us a strong fear of missing out, making us seek social approval, providing endless loops of content, making certain choices inconvenient, and disguising the true costs of actions." (
'19 Nov 17Added Sun 2019-Nov-17 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Three Great Articles on Poverty and Why I Disagree with all of them [Nan]: " One can consider approaches to poverty as a quadrant with one axis going from competitive (poverty exists because the rich are actively holding the poor down) to cooperative (poverty exists because some people haven't effectively plugged into the system) and another axis goes from optimistic (the solutions to cure poverty are already known and we can just roll them out) to pessimistic (the solutions to curing poverty are very very hard). Very few people fall in the cooperative-pessimistic quadrant, but this looks the most correct based on this analysis of data." (
'19 Nov 16Added Sat 2019-Nov-16 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Top 10 Replicated Findings in Behavioural Genetics [Nan]: " All psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence, no traits are 100% heritable, heritability is caused by many genes of small effect, phenotypic correlations between psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic mediation, the heritability of intelligence increases throughout development, age-to-age stability is mainly due to genetics, most measures of the "environment" show significant genetic influence, most associations between environmental measures and psychological traits are significantly mediated genetically, most environmental effects are not shared by children growing up in the same family, and abnormal is normal." (
'19 Nov 15Added Fri 2019-Nov-15 11 p.m. CST
in science | a)
Are You Killing Your Start-up Before It's Even Born? [Nan]: " The project cycle of doom progresses from new idea to expansion to development to dropped enthusiasm to giving up to a new idea. But nothing ever launches. Instead, you need to start small and launch as soon as possible, with deadlines - three-month plans and weekly goals." (
'19 Nov 14Added Thu 2019-Nov-14 11 p.m. CST
in entrepreneurship | a)
"Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors" [Nan]: " "as long as you feel good, sleeping anywhere between 5 and 8 hours a night seems basically fine for your health, regardless of whatever Big Sleep wants you to believe.All of the evidence we have about sleep and long-term health is in the form of those essentially meaningless correlational studies, but if you're going to use bad science to guide your sleep habits, at least use accurate bad science." (
'19 Nov 13Added Wed 2019-Nov-13 11 p.m. CST
in science | a)
An explanation of what all the various vitamins and minerals do [Nan]: They're important. (
'19 Nov 12Added Tue 2019-Nov-12 11 p.m. CST
in science | a)
The One Hour Morning Routine [Nan]: " nutrition, hydration, exercise, hygiene, learning, sunlight." (
'19 Nov 11Added Mon 2019-Nov-11 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"Yes, There is a Doctor on the Plane" [Nan]: " "I am sharing this account of a serious medical emergency on a transoceanic flight because I hope it helps other health care providers assist people in the future and learn from the difficulties I encountered." (
'19 Nov 10Added Sun 2019-Nov-10 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
What Does God Know? [Nan]: " Four different psychological studies find that people are more likely to report supernatural, superpowerful entities as having socially strategic knowledge than socially nonstrategic knowledge (e.g., that God knows you cheated on your taxes but doesn't know your recipe for blueberry pie) when those agents are able to punish (e.g., send you to Hell)." (
'19 Nov 09Added Sat 2019-Nov-09 11 p.m. CST
in skepticism | a)
The Hierarchy of Requests [Nan]: " The best person can make requests without even having to ask, either through very subtle social manipulation, planning, or luck. The very worst people are so scared that they can't even make requests. In the middle ground, people make requests, with various levels of rudeness. Also, while it might not seem like it, a person making a rude request may be doing better socially than people who can't make requests at all." (
'19 Nov 08Added Fri 2019-Nov-08 11 p.m. CST
in rationality | a)
Why Students Think They Understand When They Don't [Nan]: " Recognition is different from, and easier than, information recall. Recognizing information can lead to students thinking they know more than they actually do." (
'19 Nov 07Added Thu 2019-Nov-07 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
How I Acted Like a Pundit and Screwed up on Donald Trump [Nan]: " Early forecasts giving Donald Trump a 2% chance of winning were based on intuition instead of statistics, which made them more error and bias prone. It's hard to evaluate the strength of these forecasts, as unexpected events do happen. The best model that was made at the time still gave a <10% chance and there's danger in overcorrecting after an unexpected event." (
'19 Nov 06Added Wed 2019-Nov-06 11 p.m. CST
in politicalscience | a)
My Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer [Nan]: " "Getting a job" is not about getting a particular jobs resource, but rather about selling your skills for a fair price on the open market. Negotiating is a natural and expected part of this sale. When negotiating, never fail to negotiate, never give a particular salary number first, and never tell them at what salary point you're willing to close the deal on. Always be (genuinely) excited about the company you're negotiating with. Always play offers against each other. Buy time on a deal by saying you need to talk it over with someone else and by refusing "exploding" offers." (
'19 Nov 05Added Tue 2019-Nov-05 11 p.m. CST
in career | a)
How to Break into Tech: Job Hunting and Interviews [Nan]: " First do a lot of informational interviewing, then a lot of applying, then a lot of studying, then a lot of job interviewing." (
'19 Nov 04Added Mon 2019-Nov-04 11 p.m. CST
in career | a)
Three Facts You Haven't Heard Much About Are Keys to Better Policy Toward Central America [Nan]: " "The biggest immigration debate of this year in the US has been what to do about the rise in migration pressure at the Southwest border. That pressure comes mostly from the "Northern Triangle" of Central America: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador." But (1) "Central America is falling off a demographic cliff-so migration will slow". Also (2) more seasonal work visas have reduced illegal immigration drastically. Lastly (3) development aid is not a quick fix - instead, "[e]ffective policy toward the region requires assistance to community-driven security programs, help with food insecurity, and fostering youth employment. It also requires the enforcement of US law in partnership with regional governments." (
'19 Nov 03Added Sun 2019-Nov-03 11 p.m. CST
in immigration | a)
Seven Guidelines for Writing Worthy Works of Non-Fiction [Nan]: " "I propose the following guidelines for writing worthy works of non-fiction: 1. Pick an important topic. […] 2. Learn a lot about your topic. […] 3. Keep telling yourself: 'Once I perfect the organization of my book, it will practically write itself.' […] 4. Never preach to the choir. […] 5. When in doubt, write like Hemingway. If you can delete a word without changing the meaning of a sentence, do so. […] 6. Treat specific intellectual opponents with respect, in print and otherwise, even if they don't reciprocate. But feel free to ridicule ridiculous ideas. […] 7. Don't keep your cards close to your chest. Share your sincere probabilities with your readers. Don't just tell them what you can 'prove.' Tell them anything interesting that you're willing to bet on - and at what odds." (
'19 Nov 02Added Sat 2019-Nov-02 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Neoliberalism: a thread [Twitter]: " "To most of the people who bash 'neoliberalism', the word means free-market libertarianism - the ideology of Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. But to the people who call themselves 'neoliberal' now, it does not mean that. The people who now call themselves "neoliberals" are the heirs to a different tradition - the liberals of the 1990s who responded to the failure of communism and the excesses of libertarianism by creating a new, center-left technocratic policy program. […] Neoliberalism, as defined by its current adherents (rather than by its squawking enemies), views markets as the fundamental generators of prosperity, and government as the way to distribute that prosperity more equitably. […] It sees free trade and globalization, along with strong welfare states in rich countries, as the best way to make the world more prosperous and more equal at the same time. […] Now, am I really a neoliberal? [..] No. I am not[. ..] I've come to believe in export promotion, which is anathema to many neoliberals, since it's a restriction on free trade. […] The government *must* pick winners. Green energy and other zero-carbon technologies being chief among the things we must pick. I also believe in national health insurance, which is just straight-up nationalization of a major industry. So there are many ways in which my economic ideas diverge strongly from neoliberalism (that was not an exhaustive list). But just because I'm not really a neoliberal doesn't mean I think neoliberalism is bad. I think it's a valuable perspective we still need. Just as free-market libertarianism went too far, so will the new socialism go too far someday (if it ever manages to take power). We will need people who remember the value of markets, but who are NOT plutocrats or racists, to temper and restrain that overreach. If the job of restraining the inevitable excesses of socialism doesn't fall to the Clintonite technocratic center-left, it will fall to the right - to libertarians, racist "economic nationalists", etc. And that would be bad. Neoliberals' disagreement with leftists comes less from their goals - both want a prosperous, equal society - but from the methods they think will be most effective for getting there. And that is a healthy disagreement. Or it should be, anyway." (
'19 Nov 01Added Fri 2019-Nov-01 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Can You Tell Sports Commentary From Political Punditry? [Nan]: We couldn't. (
'19 Oct 31Added Thu 2019-Oct-31 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
The Last Nuclear Arms Treaty [Nan]: A bit basic but good overview of the nuclear situation between the US and Russia today (
'19 Oct 30Added Wed 2019-Oct-30 11 p.m. CDT
in nationalsecurity | a)
'Duck Dynasty' vs. 'Modern Family' - 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide [Nan]: " "Americans have been clustering themselves into cultural bubbles just as they have clustered in political bubbles. Their TV preferences confirm that. Related ArticleIf you had to guess how strongly a place supported Donald J. Trump in the election, would you rather know how popular 'Duck Dynasty' is there, or how George W. Bush did there in 2000? It turns out the relationship with the TV show is stronger." (
'19 Oct 29Added Tue 2019-Oct-29 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
Nigerian Astronaut is lost in space needs $3Million to come home [Nan]: " "I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. He was the first African in space when he made a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He was on a later Soviet spaceflight, Soyuz T-16Z to the secret Soviet military space station Salyut 8T in 1989. He was stranded there in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. His other Soviet crew members returned to earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, but his place was taken up by return cargo. There have been occasional Progrez supply flights to keep him going since that time. He is in good humor, but wants to come home. In the 14-years since he has been on the station, he has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $ 15,0,000 American Dollars. […] In order to access the his trust fund we need your assistance." (
'19 Oct 28Added Mon 2019-Oct-28 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
Think Outside One's Paradigm [Nan]: " "When I meet someone who works in a field outside of computer science, I usually ask them a lot of questions about their field that I'm curious about. […] When I do this, it's not unusual for me to end up asking questions that the other person hasn't really thought about before. In this case, responses range from "that's not a question that our field studies" to "I haven't thought about this much, but let's try to think it through on the spot". […] I find the cases where the other person hasn't thought about the question to be striking, because it means that I as a naive outsider can ask natural-seeming questions that haven't been considered before by an expert in the field. I think what is going on here is that I and my interlocutor are using different paradigms (in the Kuhnian sense) for determining what questions are worth asking in a field. […] think that as a scientist (or really, even as a citizen) it is important to be able to see outside one's own paradigm. […] Based on the above experiences, I plan to use the following test: When someone asks me a question about my field, how often have I not thought about it before? How tempted am I to say, 'That question isn't interesting'? If these start to become more common, then I'll know something has gone wrong." (
'19 Oct 27Added Sun 2019-Oct-27 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
The powerful economic principle behind Yo [Nan]: " The theory is that new companies can be created by unbundling and focusing on doing a particular aspect of a larger company better. (…I guess five years later we now know that this didn't actually work for Yo, though.)" (
'19 Oct 26Added Sat 2019-Oct-26 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
The Start-up Zeitgeist [Nan]: " From analyzing tens of thousands of Y Combinator start-up applications, it's clear that Uber, AirBnB, and Instagram are popular; Slack is very popular; Ebay, Yahoo, and MySpace are not; the world is shifting from websites to apps; tablets aren't cool anymore; blogs aren't cool anymore; Bitcoin isn't cool anymore; SaaS beats advertising; wearables are cool but plateauing; and hardware, AI, machine learning, and biotech are on the rise." (
'19 Oct 25Added Fri 2019-Oct-25 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
16 Start-up Metrics [Nan]: " Bookings vs. revenue, recurring vs. total revenue, gross profit, total vs. annual contract value, life time value, gross merchandise value vs. revenue, unearned or deferred revenue, unearned or deferred billings, customer acquisition cost (blended vs. paid, organic vs. inorganic), number of active users, month-on-month growth, churn, burn rate." (
'19 Oct 24Added Thu 2019-Oct-24 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
"Wedding at Scale - How I Used Twilio, Python and Google to Automate My Wedding" [Nan]: " "There are many different aspects to consider while planning a wedding. Food, decor, table fixtures (oh yes these are separate from decor), flowers, accommodation, transportation, entertainment, and location. Whilst there are many unknowns when planning a wedding, I could be sure of one thing. In weddings there are a lot of lists, nested lists, and more lists as far as the eye could see. As I stared at the growing number of items I began to wonder if there was a better way? It all felt so manual and full of inefficiencies. There had to be some aspects that technology could improve." (
'19 Oct 23Added Wed 2019-Oct-23 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Stock options are really complicated [Nan]: " "Owning stock options is different (and worse) than directly owning equity in a company. That's because you need to exercise them-i.e., pay the company money-in order to exchange the option for actual shares. Exercising the options costs a lot of money, so all else equal you would want to wait until the you're sure the stock is valuable to exercise. (For instance, you might wait until the company goes public, so you know you can sell the stock on the stock market.) But there are two downsides to that approach. First, depending on your company's policies, you might have to give up your options if you leave or are fired. Second, if you sell the stock too soon after you exercise the options, you'll get much worse tax treatment. That means you'll be caught between (a) paying twice as much in taxes as an equity holder, or (b) risking losing most of your gains because the stock price moved against you at the wrong time. So from a tax perspective, the best time to exercise the options is as soon as they're granted to you (before they even vest). This is known as "early exercise" or an "83(b) election." Unfortunately, early exercise can cost a lot of money up front, and if the company doesn't succeed, you'll lose it all. That makes the decision process kind of complicated." (
'19 Oct 22Added Tue 2019-Oct-22 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
Alternatives to Lectures [Nan]: " "Many people realize that lectures are often a bad format, yet other formats are rarely used. I'm building a list of unusual non-lecture event formats, and would love your help expanding it!" The alternative event formats: lighting talks, reciprocity ring, participatory studies, deep questions, group discussions, mini-group discussions, group practice, socializing with rules, group activities, panels, ice breakers, competitive games, cooperative games, writing exercises, new experiences, "1-2-4-all", co-creation, "help from the geniuses", questions based lectures, speed meeting, topic tables, "the hot seat", "First impressions", Real-life statistics, Workshop, Open Space, "PechaKucha 20x20″, "Recursive conversations", Group dances, Conversations dinners, Surrealist games, Empathy workshops, Interaction exhibitions, Debates, Symposiums, Office hours." (
'19 Oct 21Added Mon 2019-Oct-21 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Can You Trust Trump's Approval Rating Polls? [Nan]: " "There's no doubt that polls took a trust hit during the campaign and that Trump is going to exploit it.Here's the thing. The loss of trust mostly isn't the pollsters' fault. It's the media's fault. Oh, yes, I'm going there. The loss of trust in polls was enabled, in large part, by reporting and analysis that incorrectly portrayed the polls as showing an almost-certain Clinton win when in fact they showed a close and highly uncertain Electoral College race[. …] Not only do polls have a margin of sampling error […] but they also have other types of errors, such as nonresponse bias. […] So then, to calculate the overall error in a poll - what I'll call the true margin of error - you add the margin of sampling error and the margin of methodological error together, right? No, not quite. Instead, you need a sum of squares formula. To save you some math, here are a few useful benchmarks: For a high-quality, 1,000-person national poll, a good estimate of the true margin of error is about plus or minus 4 percentage points. For a national polling average, meanwhile, the true margin of error is about plus or minus 3 percentage points. […] That means for a high-quality, 1,000-person national poll, the true margin of error for the margin between candidates - or a candidate's net approval rating - is about 8 percentage points. […] Whenever you see an article that cites polling data, you should add or subtract the true margin of error and consider how the story would change." (
'19 Oct 20Added Sun 2019-Oct-20 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
How much does employee turnover really cost? [Nan]: " "Employee turnover is expensive. But most people have no framework for quantifying this cost, or they never even bother to try. While we can't capture every single expense, or even some of the big intangible costs like impact on employee morale, we can get a good sense by analyzing four major buckets: Cost of hiring, Cost of onboarding and training, Cost of learning and development, Cost of time with unfilled role." (
'19 Oct 19Added Sat 2019-Oct-19 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
How feasible is long-range forecasting? [Nan]: " "It is difficult to learn much of value from those exercises, for the following reasons: (1) long-range forecasts are often stated too imprecisely to be judged for accuracy; (2) even if a forecast is stated precisely, it might be difficult to find the information needed to check the forecast for accuracy; (3) degrees of confidence for long-range forecasts are rarely quantified; (4) in most cases, no comparison to a "baseline method" or "null model" is possible, which makes it difficult to assess how easy or difficult the original forecasts were; (5) incentives for forecaster accuracy are usually unclear or weak; (6) very few studies have been designed so as to allow confident inference about which factors contributed to forecasting accuracy; (7) it's difficult to know how comparable past forecasting exercises are to the forecasting we do" (
'19 Oct 18Added Fri 2019-Oct-18 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
AI does not think like us [Nan]: " "Once I escaped, I went back to my haunts in turn-of-the-century Marseilles, where I introduced Nines at my favorite bistros. I found I could rely on making beer money over the course of a night because beginners rarely perfectly remembered the eight winning sequences. I often wondered who would have designed a game with such an arbitrary set of winning patterns. I could see a certain rhythm in them, but still, there seemed to be no reason to have chosen those patterns rather than any others. Until one night." (
'19 Oct 17Added Thu 2019-Oct-17 11 p.m. CDT
in technology | a)
"California's on fire, unplugged and out of easy answers. So why don't we…?" [Nan]: " "The easy calls have been made in dealing with California's wildfire crisis. We're clearing brush, spending on firefighters, hastening insurance claims. We've tied the pay of utility executives to their companies' safety records. To save lives - and liability costs - during red flag conditions, we've cut power to great swaths of the state. We've spent billions: Rare is the press release from Gov. Gavin Newsom that does not include a litany of wildfire actions. But it hasn't been enough, and as Californians now face the realities of climate change by the terrified millions, the only choices left are hard vs. hard: Black out even more people. Ban wildland homebuilding. Bury power lines. Build microgrids. Break up the state's largest utility - the bankrupt one supplying half of the state - and give its aging, spark-spewing equipment to taxpayers or customers or hedge funds or Warren Buffett. Burn nature before it burns you.S o what are our options at this point, assuming we get through this season? Here are a few - with pros, cons and political odds." Sounds mostly like utility reimbursements, better targeted blackouts, and more controlled burns." (
'19 Oct 16Added Wed 2019-Oct-16 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
What's the chance of having drunk the same water molecule twice? [Nan]: " "pretty much 100%" (
'19 Oct 15Added Tue 2019-Oct-15 11 p.m. CDT
in science | a)
How 13 Rejected States Would Have Changed The Electoral College [Nan]: Our state borders define our presidential elections. But what if they were different? (
'19 Oct 14Added Mon 2019-Oct-14 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
How to Give Good Gifts [Nan]: Give people something they couldn't have given themselves. (
'19 Oct 13Added Sun 2019-Oct-13 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
How to Read More - The Simple System I'm Using to Read 30+ Books Per Year [Nan]: " Read 20 pages a day, first thing in the morning (or as early in the day as possible). Adds up quick!" (
'19 Oct 12Added Sat 2019-Oct-12 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Starfish Tossing Parable [Nan]: " "What?! Surely allocating a small fraction of your income to informed starfish relocation would have been a better choice! Why, it would have even created jobs, or something, I don't know. Ask the economists! How many starfish have you failed to save due to your thoughtlessness?" (
'19 Oct 11Added Fri 2019-Oct-11 11 p.m. CDT
in effectivealtruism | a)
Emergent Tool Use from Multi-Agent Interaction [Nan]: " "We've observed agents discovering progressively more complex tool use while playing a simple game of hide-and-seek. Through training in our new simulated hide-and-seek environment, agents build a series of six distinct strategies and counterstrategies, some of which we did not know our environment supported. The self-supervised emergent complexity in this simple environment further suggests that multi-agent co-adaptation may one day produce extremely complex and intelligent behavior." (
'19 Oct 10Added Thu 2019-Oct-10 11 p.m. CDT
in technology | a)
5 more things I learned from the 2016 election [Nan]: " (1) Don't ignore the down ballot elections; (2) exit polls have a lot of problems; (3) maybe news actually isn't siloed; (4) many voters are massively uninformed about politics, policy, and governing; (5) maybe the ground game was overrated because maybe Clinton had a bad ground game." (
'19 Oct 09Added Wed 2019-Oct-09 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
19 Things We Learned from the 2016 Election [Nan]: " (1) The party doesn't decide; (2) that trick of forecasting elections using voter predictions [of who will win] rather than voter intentions? Doesn't work; (3) Survey nonresponse is a thing; (4) the election outcome was consistent with "the fundamentals"; (5) polarization is real; (6) demography is not destiny; (7) public opinion does not follow elite opinion; (8) there is an authoritarian dimension of politics; (9) swings are national; (10) the ground game was overrated; (11) news is siloed; (12) the election wasn't decided by shark attacks; (13) overconfident pundits get attention; (14) red state blue state is over; (15) third parties are still treading water; (16) a working-class pundit is something to be; (17) beware of stories that explain too much; (18) Goldman Sachs rules the world; (19) the Electoral College was a ticking time bomb." (
'19 Oct 08Added Tue 2019-Oct-08 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
The Mystery of the Missing Hotel Toothpaste [Nan]: It looks like the main reason hotels don't supply toothpaste in rooms is that hotel rating agencies don't rate based on having toothpaste… And these ratings don't include toothpaste because it's not typical for hotels to supply it in rooms. The cycle continues. (
'19 Oct 07Added Mon 2019-Oct-07 11 p.m. CDT
in random | a)
Three Rules For Actually Sticking to Good Habits [Nan]: " (1) "start with a version of the habit that is incredibly easy for you"; (2) "increase your habit each day, but in an incredibly small way"; (3) "Even after increasing your habit, all repetitions must remain easy. The total habit should be broken down into easier pieces if needed." (
'19 Oct 06Added Sun 2019-Oct-06 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
"Measure Backwards, Not Forwards" [Nan]: " "We often measure progress by looking forward. We set goals. […] Can we increase our quarterly earnings by 20 percent? Can I lose 20 pounds in the next 3 months? Will I be married by 30? […] There is an opposite and, I think, more useful approach: measure backward, not forward. […] Basically, I measure progress backward (What happened in my business this week?) and use that backward measurement as a way to guide my actions for the next week. I use a similar strategy in the gym. I lift every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. When I show up at the gym, I open my notebook and look at the weights I lifted during my last workout or two. Then, I plan my workout by slightly increasing the sets, reps, or weight from where they were last week. I go for tiny increases, of course. I'm interested in one percent gains. […] I am constantly looking to improve, but I base my choices on what has recently happened, not on what I hope will happen in the future." (
'19 Oct 05Added Sat 2019-Oct-05 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
The Work-Rest Fractal [Nan]: " "Work-life balance is fractal-it's important to consider at every level." ~5-10min+ break every hour, ~1+ hour break every day, time off after work, 1-2 days ever week (weekend), 1-2+ weeks vacation every year, and a longer sabbatical (if possible) every few years." (
'19 Oct 04Added Fri 2019-Oct-04 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Argument From My Opponent Believes Something [Nan]: " "It is an unchallengeable orthodoxy that you should wear a coat if it is cold out. Day after day we hear shrill warnings from the high priests of this new religion practically seething with hatred for anyone who might possibly dare to go out without a winter coat on. But these ideologues don't realize that just wearing more jackets can't solve all of our society's problems. Here's a reality check - no one is under any obligation to put on any clothing they don't want to, and North Face and REI are not entitled to your hard-earned money. All that these increasingly strident claims about jackets do is shame underprivileged people who can't afford jackets, suggesting them as legitimate targets for violence. In conclusion, do we really want to say that people should be judged by the clothes they wear? Or can we accept the unjacketed human body to be potentially just as beautiful as someone bundled beneath ten layers of coats?" (
'19 Oct 03Added Thu 2019-Oct-03 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
"Fracking Is the Bridge to Renewable Energy" [Nan]: " So the U.S. would be better off without fracking. And because of the shift to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, this will eventually happen. […] But banning fracking too quickly might jeopardize this crucial transition. Why? Because switching to renewable energy requires a lot of energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric cars must be manufactured in huge quantities. Buildings must be retrofitted with new electrical wiring and energy efficiency technologies. […] All of this will take huge amounts of energy - electricity and vehicle fuel. Where will it come from? Currently, renewable sources account for only 11% of U.S. primary energy consumption. […] You can't use solar and wind to build the generation capacity for more solar and wind until you have a lot of it. The U.S. simply isn't there yet - it doesn't have enough green energy to power the transition. Instead, if fracking is banned immediately, the U.S. will probably go back to using coal and imported oil (Sanders has also proposed banning the other option, nuclear power). This will mean much greater carbon emission and deadly air pollution from coal. It will also would push up global oil prices, generating big windfalls for leaders like Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia's Mohammad Bin Salman. Such a reversal would be a terrible shame." (
'19 Oct 02Added Wed 2019-Oct-02 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Out of shape? Why deep learning works differently than we thought [Nan]: " How do neural networks recognize a cat? A widely accepted answer to this question is: by detecting its shape. - "We conducted a series of nine experiments encompassing nearly a hundred human observers and many widely used deep neural networks (AlexNet, VGG-16, GoogLeNet, ResNet-50, ResNet-152, DenseNet-121, SqueezeNet1_1), showing them hundreds of images with conflicting shapes and textures. The results left little room for doubt: we found striking evidence in favor of the texture explanation! A cat with:lephant skin is an elephant to deep neural networks, and still a cat to humans. A car with the texture of a clock is a clock to deep neural networks, as much as a bear with the surface characteristics of a bottle is recognized as a bottle. Current deep learning techniques for object recognition primarily rely on textures, not on object shapes." (
'19 Oct 01Added Tue 2019-Oct-01 11 p.m. CDT
in technology | a)
One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Microsoft Excel [Nan]: " "Autoformatting in Microsoft Excel has caused many a headache-but now, a new study shows that one in five genetics papers in top scientific journals contains errors from the program, The Washington Post reports. The errors often arose when gene names in a spreadsheet were automatically changed to calendar dates or numerical values" (
'19 Sep 30Added Mon 2019-Sep-30 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
Lots Of People Going Around With Mild Hallucinations All The Time [Nan]: " "How come some New Agey people say they can see auras around people? Are they just lying? Seems like a weird thing to lie about. And a lot of these people don't sound like they're lying. Aren't auras a classic LSD hallucination? I understand they're not quite as simple as the haloes around lights that HPPD people get; they're only around people and sometimes the colors seem meaningful. But add something about handwave handwave using a special kind of visual processing for other people handwave synaesthesia, and maybe it's not totally outside the realm of possibility? Maybe if your priors are so relaxed - ie so far towards the "naturally on LSD all the time" side of the scale - that you believe in auras, then your priors might also be so relaxed that you can see them." (
'19 Sep 29Added Sun 2019-Sep-29 11 p.m. CDT
in science | a)
One Touch to Inbox Zero [Nan]: " First, make your inbox just about email. Then, for each email, either archive, reply and archive, put it in the calendar and archive, put it in a task list and archive, put it in a reference section and archive, or put it in "read it later" and archive." (
'19 Sep 28Added Sat 2019-Sep-28 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
The Productivity Holy Grail [Podcast] [Nan]: " Sebastian defines "Morale Responsiveness" - if you are more morale responsive, you tend to have higher highs and lower lows - you work in a flow and get a lot done but then crash after. For example, Sybastian Stallone wrote Rocky in only three days, including one 20hr day. This contrasts with a "slow and steady wins the race" approach, where you consistently put in a solid amount of work each day. Is it possible to get the highs of high morale responsiveness while avoiding the crash and keeping the steady work in the down periods? It hasn't happened yet. More info than this isn't really provided but I find the concept of "morale responsiveness" very useful. I hypothesize that co-founder teams are great with one morale responsive (visionary) and one morale unresponsive (consistent) person." (
'19 Sep 27Added Fri 2019-Sep-27 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Obscure Books Combo Power [Podcast] [Nan]: Three concepts: (1) reflect on why you read and what you want to get out of reading. (2) try to read a few books on the same subject to try to identify common themes. These might be universal truths. (3) read rare / obscure books - you'll likely be the only person in the world to have read a certain combination of obscure books which gives you a very unique perspective that you can use to add value. I'm personally sold on (1) and (2) but unconvinced about (3). (
'19 Sep 26Added Thu 2019-Sep-26 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Things that Sometimes Work if You Have Depression [Nan]: " See a doctor, blood tests, therapy, SSRIs, psychiatry, time" (
'19 Sep 25Added Wed 2019-Sep-25 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Things that Sometimes Work if You Have Anxiety [Nan]: " Exercise, less/no coffee, eat well, more sleep, mindfulness activities, therapy, see a doctor, SSRIs" (
'19 Sep 24Added Tue 2019-Sep-24 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
How to Stop Being Tired All the Time (Video) [Nan]: " Get enough sleep (duh), consider trying to wake naturally and without an alarm, get outside / get sunlight exposure every day / vitamin D supplement, get exercise every day (even if low level), use caffeine sparingly, and drink more water." (
'19 Sep 23Added Mon 2019-Sep-23 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
How to Stop Feeling Tired in the Afternoon (Video) [Nan]: " Reset (take break/walk), refuel (food/water), and refocus (clear tabs, get study music, get in the mindset to resume work). Also consider changing schedules (e.g., afternoon workouts) if possible." (
'19 Sep 22Added Sun 2019-Sep-22 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Cardiologists and Chinese Robbers [Nan]: There's something pretty wrong about cardiologists. (
'19 Sep 21Added Sat 2019-Sep-21 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
A minimalist strength workout [Nan]: " Just pull ups, goblet squats, push ups, lunges, and single-leg deadlifts." (
'19 Sep 20Added Fri 2019-Sep-20 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
"Entrepreneurship - a game of poker, not roulette" [Nan]: " While there is a lot of luck involved with entrepreneurship, there is also a lot of skill, and certain factors do make people more or less likely to succeed." (
'19 Sep 19Added Thu 2019-Sep-19 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
The Inspection Paradox is Everywhere [Nan]: " Why do airlines complain about having so many empty flights, yet passengers complain about all the flights being too full? That's because you're more likely to be on a full flight, just because there are more people! Few people enjoy the emptiness of an empty flight, but many people feel the pinch of a full flight." (
'19 Sep 18Added Wed 2019-Sep-18 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
Measuring Developer Productivity [Nan]: " Measuring programmer productivity is (nearly) impossible to do, and encompasses a wide variety of factors. Rather than having an objective metric, perhaps we should have a multi-factor subjective rubric for assessing performance." (
'19 Sep 17Added Tue 2019-Sep-17 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Book Review - Albion's Seed [Nan]: " Most people think of the US colonists in the 1600s as one homogenous group of people, but they were really four different cultures with four different distinct and weird histories. …And they may possibly predict modern day Republicans and Democrats." (
'19 Sep 16Added Mon 2019-Sep-16 11 p.m. CDT
in culturewar | a)
Wage Stagnation - Much More Than You Wanted to Know [Nan]: " The cause of wage stagnation is overstated and multifactorial. Factors: inflation miscalculations, wages vs. total compensation, increasing labor vs. capital inequality (because of automation and because of policy), increasing wage inequality (because of deunionization, because of policies permitting high executive salaries, and because of globalization and automation)." (
'19 Sep 15Added Sun 2019-Sep-15 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
The Homeless 8-Year-Old Chess Champion and Other Horrific 'Uplifting' Stories [Nan]: "There's a certain genre of light-hearted human-interest stories that are common across most news platforms. […] However, in the worsening economic climate, a growing number of these supposedly 'uplifting' stories become unintentionally horrifying after a moment's reflection" … "Inspiring! This CEO Saw One of His Employees Digging Through the Dumpster for Food, So He Bought Her a Headlamp to Make It Easier to Sift through the Garbage" (
'19 Sep 14Added Sat 2019-Sep-14 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Race and Justice - Much More Than You Wanted to Know [Nan]: " "There seems to be a strong racial bias in capital punishment and a moderate racial bias in sentence length and decision to jail. There is ambiguity over the level of racial bias, depending on whose studies you want to believe and how strictly you define 'racial bias', in police stops, police shootings in certain jurisdictions, and arrests for minor drug offenses. There seems to be little or no racial bias in arrests for serious violent crime, police shootings in most jurisdictions, prosecutions, or convictions. Overall I disagree with the City Journal claim that there is no evidence of racial bias in the justice system. But I also disagree with the people who say things like 'Every part of America's criminal justice is systemically racist by design' or 'White people can get away with murder but black people are constantly persecuted for any minor infraction' […] It would be nice to say that this shows the criminal justice system is not disproportionately harming blacks, but unfortunately it doesn't come anywhere close to showing anything of the sort. There are still many ways it can indirectly harm blacks without being explicitly racist" (
'19 Sep 13Added Fri 2019-Sep-13 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Teachers: Much More Than You Wanted to Know [Nan]: "In summary: teacher quality probably explains 10% of the variation in same-year test scores. A +1 SD better teacher might cause a +0.1 SD year-on-year improvement in test scores. This decays quickly with time and is probably disappears entirely after four or five years, though there may also be small lingering effects. It's hard to rule out the possibility that other factors, like endogenous sorting of students, or students' genetic potential, contributes to this as an artifact, and most people agree that these sorts of scores combine some signal with a lot of noise. For some reason, even though teachers' effects on test scores decay very quickly, studies have shown that they have significant impact on earning as much as 20 or 25 years later, so much so that kindergarten teacher quality can predict thousands of dollars of difference in adult income. This seemingly unbelievable finding has been replicated in quasi-experiments and even in real experiments and is difficult to banish. Since it does not happen through standardized test scores, the most likely explanation is that it involves non-cognitive factors like behavior. I really don't know whether to believe this and right now I say 50-50 odds that this is a real effect or not - mostly based on low priors rather than on any weakness of the studies themselves. I don't understand this field very well and place low confidence in anything I have to say about it." (
'19 Sep 12Added Thu 2019-Sep-12 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
How to Design a Green New Deal That Isn't Over the Top [Nan]: " "This alternative Green New Deal has similarities to Ocasio-Cortez's version, but also has key differences. By focusing on technological development and international assistance, it would tackle the all-important problem of global emissions. By avoiding huge open-ended commitments like a federal job guarantee or universal basic income, and by including progressive tax increases, it would avoid the threat of excessive budget deficits. Ultimately, this plan would represent the U.S.'s best shot at fighting the looming global menace of climate change while also making the country more egalitarian in a safe and sustainable way. It would be a worthy successor to the original New Deal." (
'19 Sep 11Added Wed 2019-Sep-11 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
"Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez Chose the Wrong Interest-Rate Cap" [Nan]: " Their credit-card plan could hurt more than help by crowding out access to lending from those who need it the most. "The balance of evidence suggests that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders should take a different approach to regulating consumer finance. They should set the interest rate cap higher - perhaps at 25% to start - and allow it to fluctuate based on market interest rates. That would target the most exploitative lenders while allowing the bulk of Americans to borrow when needed." (
'19 Sep 10Added Tue 2019-Sep-10 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Malthusianisms [Nan]: A list of obvious statements that undercut entire ideologies. (
'19 Sep 09Added Mon 2019-Sep-09 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
The Russians and the Moon [Prokopetz.tumblr]: How Moscow ended up being a state of mind. (
'19 Sep 08Added Sun 2019-Sep-08 11 p.m. CDT
in random | a)
Increasingly competitive college admissions - much more than you wanted to know [Nan]: " "There is strong evidence for more competition for places at top colleges now than 10, 50, or 100 years ago. There is medium evidence that this is also true for upper-to-medium-tier colleges. It is still easy to get into medium-to-lower-tier colleges. Until 1900, there was no competition for top colleges, medical schools, or law schools. A secular trend towards increasing admissions (increasing wealth + demand for skills?) plus two shocks from the GI Bill and the Vietnam draft led to a glut of applicants that overwhelmed schools and forced them to begin selecting applicants. Changes up until ten years ago were because of a growing applicant pool, after which the applicant pool (both domestic and international) stopped growing and started shrinking. Increased competition since ten years ago does not involve applicant pool size. Changes after ten years ago are less clear, but the most important factor is probably the ease of applying to more colleges. […] All the hand-wringing about getting into good colleges is probably a waste of time, unless you are from a disadvantaged background. For most people, admission to a more selective college does not translate into a more lucrative career or a higher chance of admission to postgraduate education. There may be isolated exceptions at the very top, like for Supreme Court justices." (
'19 Sep 07Added Sat 2019-Sep-07 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend [Nan]: " Find a profitable idea by reviewing top sellers on Amazon, completed listings on eBay, Craigslist gigs, and thinking of what you do on a daily basis and what you complain about. Then check Google Trends, Google Insights, and Facebook ads to check if there's $1M worth of customers. Then validate your idea by making a basic sales page." (
'19 Sep 06Added Fri 2019-Sep-06 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
Late employee equity [Nan]: " If you follow the strategy of being the 100th employee at a solid startup (proxy variable: nominee for the TechCrunch Crunchies award for best overall startup), as of the end of 2014 your equity would have an IRR of ~27%." (
'19 Sep 05Added Thu 2019-Sep-05 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
"Have a particular strength? Already an expert in a field? Here are the socially impactful careers 80,000 Hours suggests you consider first" [Nan]: A choose your own adventure for maximizing impact in your career. (
'19 Sep 04Added Wed 2019-Sep-04 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
How to Explore in a Career [Nan]: " Use natural exploration activities (e.g., gap year, summer holidays, non-major classes), go back to graduate school after a few years to reset your career, consider making little bets like one week trials, and look for jobs that let you work in many industries and practice many skills (e.g., freelancing, consulting)." (
'19 Sep 03Added Tue 2019-Sep-03 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
Unfortunate statistical terms [Nan]: " Statistical significance, Type I/II error, statistical power, prediction error, variance explained, moderator vs. mediator, biased, degrees of freedom, true score, and reliability." (
'19 Sep 02Added Mon 2019-Sep-02 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
Stalin and Summary Statistics [Nan]: saying that a variable explains 14% of the variance sounds like nothing. Saying a correlation of 0.37 sounds like something. Showing a scatterplot of that correlation with a best fit graph looks like a very clear relationship. …Except all three of these statistics are identical. The reporting of a statistic can be far more skewed than the actual statistic. (
'19 Sep 01Added Sun 2019-Sep-01 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
Avoid common data-interpretation errors [Nan]: " Summary statistics can be reductive and not tell the whole story; instead, plotting the data helps. Averages can be misleading; instead it is best to break up the data into relevant groups and/or look at the distribution. Top 10 summaries can be misleading depending on how large the groups are outside the top 10; instead one should look at the overall distribution. General rules of handling data can be misleading; instead you should consider the context when applying these rules." (
'19 Aug 31Added Sat 2019-Aug-31 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
"Talking about Female Representation, as a Man" [The Unitofcaring.tumblr]: " Avoid suggesting that there are no women currently in the movement, avoid using sexist stereotypes, avoid tokenizing, and ask women what they think or recommend." (
'19 Aug 30Added Fri 2019-Aug-30 11 p.m. CDT
in culturewar | a)
Atlassian Boosted Its Female Technical Hires By 80% - Here's How [Nan]: " There is a "diversity debt" accrued by organizations who don't hire diversely right off, as it becomes harder to rediversify a homogenous workforce. To improve this, you should drop the belief your company is a meritocracy, reach out to diverse pools, set up and record the results of your experiments, trigger continuous anonymous feedback, standardize evaluations for interviews and promotions, judge more on potential, call out and change exclusive practices, and update your employer branding to show more diversity and avoid specific language." (
'19 Aug 29Added Thu 2019-Aug-29 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics [Nan]: The press will treat you worse if you do a little bit to help a problem rather than ignore it completely. (
'19 Aug 28Added Wed 2019-Aug-28 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Who Really Cares About the Poor? - A Socratic Dialogue [Nan]: " "I know you can't personally cure poverty, Glaucon. But you can save a dozen poor families from their plight. And when you're done, you'll still live comfortably." (
'19 Aug 27Added Tue 2019-Aug-27 11 p.m. CDT
in giving | a)
51 Tips For a Successful Life [Nan]: " (1) Get married. Then get divorced. Then get remarried. (2) Every day, ask yourself, do I feel like showering today? If the answer is, "yes," shower. (3) Be in environments with the right amount of light. (4) Subtly vary your bedtime and waking times every day, so that you never quite settle into a pattern. Same for mealtimes." (
'19 Aug 26Added Mon 2019-Aug-26 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Placebo buttons [Nan]: "Most elevator door close buttons, crosswalk buttons, and office thermostats are fake." (
'19 Aug 25Added Sun 2019-Aug-25 11 p.m. CDT
in random | a)
"Why is the Dollar sign a letter "S"?" [Nan]: Blame Spain. (
'19 Aug 24Added Sat 2019-Aug-24 11 p.m. CDT
in random | a)
44 Engineer Management Lessons [Nan]: Already as summarized as it can get; there's some good stuff in here. (
'19 Aug 23Added Fri 2019-Aug-23 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Heisenberg Developers [Nan]: "Beware the dangers of shoehorning developers into quick sprints, micromanagement, and without any ability to improve the quality of the codebase." (
'19 Aug 22Added Thu 2019-Aug-22 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Should we tax people for being annoying? [Nan]: "Some things we do produce negative outcomes for society (e.g., pollution, traffic, disease, annoying music). If we taxed these negative outcomes, we'd correctly account for their costs, reduce the amount of negative things that happen." (
'19 Aug 21Added Wed 2019-Aug-21 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
How to Scale Yourself and Get More Done Than You Thought Possible [Nan]: "Some tips: (1) it's okay to drop the ball; (2) you must focus on doing the correct work, not just work that interrupts you; (3) anything you don't do immediately must be dropped, delegated, or deferred to a scheduled time; (4) it's easier to find a friend who reads all the blogs and aggregates them than for you to read all the blogs; and (5) you should prefer replying somewhere more public than a 1-1 email to create more value for more people." (
'19 Aug 20Added Tue 2019-Aug-20 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Why the Smartest People Don't Always Give the Best Advice: the Importance of Local Wisdom [Nan]: "It is often better to find someone closer to you in skill than the smartest possible person, because they'll be more relatable to your current situation, they have more up-to-date advice, and what matters changes as you get better." (
'19 Aug 19Added Mon 2019-Aug-19 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Number and size of computer monitors and productivity - a review [Nan]: "Does using more than one computer monitor make you productive? Many people report it does. A systematic review of studies finds few studies of notable quality, but generally finds no to little support for superior work performance using dual vs. single screens. Of course, I'm skeptical that a study would be sufficiently powered or nuanced to pick up the true effects of multi-monitor use. (I personally do not use more than the monitor available to my laptop and find diseconomies of scale to adding more monitors.)" (
'19 Aug 18Added Sun 2019-Aug-18 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Diversity and team performance - What the research says [Nan]: "Diversity (mainly with regard to age, culture, gender, race) does not have an overall clear effect, positive or negative, on the performance of teams or groups of people. Diverse teams tend to have worse communication and more conflict, but also tend to be more creative, innovative, and better at problem solving. Remote teams, more balanced teams, and teams that have been together longer have less negative ramifications of diversity." (
'19 Aug 17Added Sat 2019-Aug-17 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Searching for One-Sided Trade-offs [Nan]: "People at colleges are there because it was the best college they could get into. If they were better, they would have gotten into a different college. This means the only way you can get better students at your college is insider trading (you know something awesome about that student that other colleges don't know), bias compensation (you know other colleges irrationally dislike, e.g., asians), and comparative advantage (you can't be the best college, but you could be the best *Jewish* college). This similar framework can be used to evaluate policy changes, lifehacks, and many other things." (
'19 Aug 16Added Fri 2019-Aug-16 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Why Didn't Denmark Sell Greenland? [Nan]: "After WWII, the Cold War motivated the USA to offer $100M for ownership of Greenland, which was declined. The USA got the benefit of using Greenland anyway. Since then, the island otherwise remained a drain with a dim prospect that it will ever be useful to Denmark." (
'19 Aug 15Added Thu 2019-Aug-15 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Take this quiz and see if you can pick the 'gerrymandered' redistricting plan [Nan]: "You cannot tell a gerrymandered district solely by whether the shape looks "weird". In fact, many "weird" shaped districts could be completely proportional." (
'19 Aug 14Added Wed 2019-Aug-14 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
The Cowpox of Doubt [Nan]: "Rationality is about doubting your own beliefs, not about trying to seek out and argue against other beliefs. Doing so risks being stupid, which risks being counterproductive." (
'19 Aug 13Added Tue 2019-Aug-13 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
How to Hire [Nan]: "You should spend more time on it, look for smart and effective people, have people do trial work that is very similar to the work they would actually do, use personal networks for sourcing candidates, try to sell a company vision, try to hire for particular values, hire people you like, put rigor into the process by being organized and reflecting on failure, avoid hiring for the sake of hiring, and be generous with equity." (
'19 Aug 12Added Mon 2019-Aug-12 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Power up your team with non-violent communication [Nan]: " Non-violent communication is the difference between asking "will you get your work done this week?" and "what do you need to hit your deadline this week?". It accomplishes the same goal but sounds much more supportive." (
'19 Aug 11Added Sun 2019-Aug-11 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
When is it time to refactor? [Nan]: " One ought to refactor when it will speed up the task at hand (including the cost of time spent refactoring), when the refactoring is quick and contained, or when the un-factored code has had three distinct problems where it has slowed people down." (
'19 Aug 10Added Sat 2019-Aug-10 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
"Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice" [Nan]: " Instead of identifying as a programmer who works in a particular technology, you should instead focus on how you're specifically driving value for whatever organization you are working for. Also, you should focus on driving your own professional development, networking, and negotiating." (
'19 Aug 09Added Fri 2019-Aug-09 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
The order of things [Nan]: " While objective analysis is a good thing, it is very difficult to reduce the ranking of things like colleges down to just a handful of factors that are aggregated together because (a) people value different things so there is no one standard, (b) it is hard to find objective proxies for broad yet important concepts, and (c) the rankings end up with a feedback loop where being ranked higher makes you more likely to be ranked higher in the future." (
'19 Aug 08Added Thu 2019-Aug-08 11 p.m. CDT
in costeffectiveness | a)
When Confounding Variables Are Out of Control [Nan]: Imperfect measures of controlling variables can create correlations that don't really exist. (
'19 Aug 07Added Wed 2019-Aug-07 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
Things that screw up your causal inference [Nan]: " Selection bias, omitted variable bias, residual confounding, and collider bias." (
'19 Aug 06Added Tue 2019-Aug-06 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
"The Other Half of "Artists Ship" [Nan]: " Shipping is good and shipping faster is usually better. Regulations and checks exist to make sure bad things don't happen when shipping happens, but they also get in the way of shipping faster. Understanding that all regulations and checks have costs is very important, even if we ultimately agree that these regulations are good ideas." (
'19 Aug 05Added Mon 2019-Aug-05 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
The ideology is not the movement [Nan]: Causes all try seek to become tribes and this explains a lot about why causes and religions look the way they are. (
'19 Aug 04Added Sun 2019-Aug-04 11 p.m. CDT
in culturewar | a)
Do economists care? [Nan]: Economists have answers to policy questions but don't seem to do much work to actually implement them. (
'19 Aug 03Added Sat 2019-Aug-03 11 p.m. CDT
in economics | a)
Why we debate the unimportant issues [Nan]: " There are some regulations that are likely clearly nuts and should be removed, but no one ever talks about them, because they're not controversial. Instead, we talk about the controversial regulations, which are much less clear whether they're good or bad (and it is precisely this thing that makes them controversial)." (
'19 Aug 02Added Fri 2019-Aug-02 11 p.m. CDT
in culturewar | a)
Headlines from a Mathematically Literate World [Nan]: "Firm's Meteoric Rise Explained by Good Luck, Selection Bias" (
'19 Aug 01Added Thu 2019-Aug-01 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
The Surprising Effect of Small Efforts Over Time [Nan]: "If you save an extra $5 a day, at the end of the decade, you'll have $18,250!" (
'19 Jul 31Added Wed 2019-Jul-31 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Giving and Accepting Apologies [Nan]: It's hard to apologize without overly admitting that you're at fault. (
'19 Jul 30Added Tue 2019-Jul-30 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Right is the new left [Nan]: "Being counter-culture now is about being more conservative, not more liberal." (
'19 Jul 29Added Mon 2019-Jul-29 11 p.m. CDT
in culturewar | a)
The Interview Method - Why Our Assumptions About Success Are Wrong [Nan]: "An easy way to find out something, such as how to be successful, is to ask some relevant people." (
'19 Jul 28Added Sun 2019-Jul-28 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
The Truth about Violence - 3 Principles of Self-Defense [Nan]: "Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places, do not defend your property with your life, and always respond immediately to attacks and escape." (
'19 Jul 27Added Sat 2019-Jul-27 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Newtonian Ethics [Nan]: "The only way "commonsense" ethics makes sense is if morality is actually a form of gravity, and moral claims dissipate in proportion to the square of the distance." (
'19 Jul 26Added Fri 2019-Jul-26 11 p.m. CDT
in ethics | a)
Learned Blankness [Nan]: "Sometimes we think we're just not good at something, so we don't even try to figure it out. But if we thought about it for more than five seconds, we could have figured it out." (
'19 Jul 25Added Thu 2019-Jul-25 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
What Matters More - Your Network or Skills? [Nan]: "People argue over whether it's who you know or what you know. But it turns out you need both and you should pursue whatever you're weakest at, possibly alternating between time spent aiming to achieve both." (
'19 Jul 24Added Wed 2019-Jul-24 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
These are the best cities in the US to be a software engineer [Nan]: " San Francisco might have the highest salaries for developers, but it also has a really high cost of living. Instead, other cities, like Seattle, San Jose, and Raleigh, are better when cost of living is taken into account." (
'19 Jul 23Added Tue 2019-Jul-23 11 p.m. CDT
in giving | a)
Do not end the week with nothing [Nan]: "When you work for a company, you put in a week of work, get a paycheck, and it's even. However, this gets you nowhere forward - instead, each week you should aim to build some sort of capital, such as visible progress on a project." (
'19 Jul 22Added Mon 2019-Jul-22 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
"Screw motivation, what you need is discipline" [Nan]: Motivation operates on the erroneous assumption that you need to feel good about what you are doing and enjoy it in the moment. Discipline separates the outward functioning from feel-good feelings and can allow you to get things done. (
'19 Jul 21Added Sun 2019-Jul-21 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Understanding Scam Victims - Seven Principles for Systems Security [Nan]: "Beyond the amusing examples of actual scams, they find seven principles that scams prey upon: distraction, trust of authority, use of shills, trapping the mark in dishonesty, slight of hand and deception, manipulating based on "need and greed", and forcing the mark to act quickly." (
'19 Jul 20Added Sat 2019-Jul-20 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
10 ways to increase the productivity of your programmers [Nan]: Minimize distractions by cutting down on email and IM and getting private offices. Avoid meetings and focus on an 8-hour day. Encourage physical and mental health. Don't avoid buying tools when needed. Don't make your programmers do things other than program. Make sure project specs are clear. Make sure the environment is comfortable. Make sure you have a good attitude. Don't overlook mentorship. Do code reviews. (
'19 Jul 19Added Fri 2019-Jul-19 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
A Formula for the Number of Days in Each Month [Nan]: - f(x) = 28 + (x + &lfloor;x&frasl;8&rfloor;) mod 2 + 2 mod x + 2 &lfloor;1&frasl;x&rfloor; (
'19 Jul 18Added Thu 2019-Jul-18 11 p.m. CDT
in math | a)
Why are people attracted to Donald Trump? [Nan]: Trump represents an outsider that people can project their dislike for the government and general discontent. (
'19 Jul 17Added Wed 2019-Jul-17 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
Startup Sales Secrets I Learned From Yelp [Nan]: " A great overview of the sales funnel and how to move people along it, going from leads, to trying to reach the decision-maker, to being in contact with the decision-maker, to setting a pitching appointment, to pitching, to winning the sale." (
'19 Jul 15Added Mon 2019-Jul-15 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
Vox and the False Consensus of 'Most Economists Agree' [Nan]: " It's not enough in journalism to claim that "most economists say" something without providing support for that consensus." (
'19 Jul 14Added Sun 2019-Jul-14 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
"Are Your Programmers Working Hard, Or Are They Lazy?" [Nan]: " Programmers need to be judged by results, not by amount of hours worked, because the amount of hours worked could just be reflecting bad software design practices." (
'19 Jul 13Added Sat 2019-Jul-13 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
What I Learned Selling A Software Business [Nan]: " Everything you need to know about selling a software business, through the prominent example of Bingo Card Creator." (
'19 Jul 12Added Fri 2019-Jul-12 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
Start-ups and Salary [Twitter]: If you're taking a tech job without a guaranteed market-rate salary you're either a co-founder and deserve significant and approximately equal equity. (
'19 Jul 11Added Thu 2019-Jul-11 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
Avoiding Ivy League Preschool Syndrome [Nan]: " Raising kids isn't expensive when you realize that you don't always need to get them the fanciest stuff or send them to the fanciest schools just so they can "get ahead"." (
'19 Jul 10Added Wed 2019-Jul-10 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
What a Non-Effect Looks Like [Nan]: " Studies, even meta-analyzes, can include non-effects that look like statistically significant positive effects because of unreported confounders and researcher bias." (
'19 Jul 09Added Tue 2019-Jul-09 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism [Nan]: " In the past, people were told what they could or couldn't do by the government. Then liberalism happened, and people were allowed to do whatever they wanted. But then there was a backlash and now people want more things banned again. The only true solution is a world government where people are free to make their own societies as permissive or restrictive as they want." (
'19 Jul 08Added Mon 2019-Jul-08 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
500 Miles [Nan]: " The strangest computer bug ever, where email could be sent …but only if the recipient lived within 500 miles of the email server." (
'19 Jul 06Added Sat 2019-Jul-06 11 p.m. CDT
in technology | a)
Getting Things Done in 15 Minutes [Nan]: " GTD is a system of organizing yourself to get things done that involves building multiple lists and processing them regularly. While I disagree with some of it, I think it forms a great core to most productivity systems, and it is definitely where I got my start." (
'19 Jul 05Added Fri 2019-Jul-05 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
When to buy insurance [Nan]: " Insurance usually is more expensive to have than the thing it protects you against, or else insurance companies wouldn't make money. Thus you should generally not buy insurance unless you're required by law, you know something that the insurance companies don't and can take advantage of that information asymmetry, the insurance does collective borrowing to lower costs, when someone else will pay for the insurance, or when the insurance protects against something you cannot afford to replace." (
'19 Jul 04Added Thu 2019-Jul-04 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Against legal harmonization [Nan]: Legal harmonization is the process of making the laws the same across different states and countries. This is a good thing because it lowers costs and barriers to trade and tourism. However it also comes at a significant cost by reducing the amount of experimentation we can do with different laws to find the best ways of regulating something. (
'19 Jul 03Added Wed 2019-Jul-03 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
What we learned from failing as first-time founders straight out of college [Nan]: " You need a complete team with both business and technical talent before you start, you need product-market fit and you need to test out your ideas on a wide variety of people and avoid focusing on what you want to hear, you need systems to make sure you maintain your communication and accountability, and you need a patient, accessible, invested mentor." (
'19 Jul 02Added Tue 2019-Jul-02 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People [Nan]: " We know a lot about people who are politically polarizing, but what are the characteristics of those who are the opposite? These people tend to criticize their own group from within, acknowledge the trade-offs and that there are benefits to each side, acknowledge that there are often more than two sides, doubt themselves, be specific on issues and avoid overall ideology, qualify their positions, and keep the conversation going." (
'19 Jul 01Added Mon 2019-Jul-01 11 p.m. CDT
in culturewar | a)
How to Increase Lifetime Value with 3 Emails [Nan]: " The three emails are dunning emails (emails sent to encourage people to renew their credit card before it expires), asking the user to upgrade to an annual subscription, and adding things to receipts like feature demos, pending actions, and referral links." (
'19 Jun 30Added Sun 2019-Jun-30 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
Good review on the upsides and downsides of p-values [Twitter]: " A p-value is useful as a filter for avoiding false positives. We can still make research stronger by having a stronger filter (requiring a lower p-value threshold) or by running multiple filters (replication). Some fields like finance need to use likelihood ratios because they're as afraid of false negatives as they are of false positives, but p-values seem to work for the rest of science." (
'19 Jun 29Added Sat 2019-Jun-29 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
Against Bravery Debates [Nan]: " Because of people's different circumstances, different people need to hear different things. Thus bashing atheism can be really assuring to someone but really offensive to someone else. This persists due to things like the hostile media effect. It can be good or bad, but it affects every debate." (
'19 Jun 28Added Fri 2019-Jun-28 11 p.m. CDT
in culturewar | a)
Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted [Nan]: " If you object to consequentialist ethical theories because you think they endorse horrible or catastrophic decisions, then you may instead be objecting to short-sighted utility functions or poor decision theories. Consequentialism shouldn't be about whatever has the best immediate consequences, but whatever would have the best consequences when everyone understands that is the decision that consequentialism will recommend." (
'19 Jun 27Added Thu 2019-Jun-27 11 p.m. CDT
in ethics | a)
The evidence debate continues - Chris Whitty and Stefan Dercon respond from DFID [Nan]: " Being in favor of evidence does not mean you think non-evidenced activities are pointless, it means you don't know what is pointless and want evidence. It also does not mean just using RCTs at the exclusion of all else, but understanding the power of RCTs. Also, evidence-based approaches are still compatible with looking at societal-level change." (
'19 Jun 26Added Wed 2019-Jun-26 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
Everything is broken [Nan]: There are a lot of bugs out there. (
'19 Jun 25Added Tue 2019-Jun-25 11 p.m. CDT
in technology | a)
You Get What You Give - How A Potato Salad Can Teach You To Run A Good Donation Drive [Nan]: The secret to doing a successful donation drive is how you make the potential donor feel. (
'19 Jun 24Added Mon 2019-Jun-24 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Name gender over time [Nan]: " Many names switch gender over time. It seems like this is almost always male names becoming female names, but in fact there are many female-to-male name shifts as well (about one-third as many)." (
'19 Jun 23Added Sun 2019-Jun-23 11 p.m. CDT
in random | a)
You Could Be The Warren Buffet of Social Investing [Nan]: " There are opportunities to achieve a 60x ROI with little risk. The downside is that the returns come back to society in the form of children who become more productive citizens later in life, rather than combing back to the investor who funded the program." (
'19 Jun 21Added Fri 2019-Jun-21 11 p.m. CDT
in giving | a)
The Toxoplasma Of Rage [Nan]: " The only stories that get amplified are controversial, which is why we hear a lot more about race and politics than about objectively more important issues like foreign aid. Also, since only controversial actions get attention you either can be correct and ignored or incorrect and get media attention." (
'19 Jun 20Added Thu 2019-Jun-20 11 p.m. CDT
in culturewar | a)
How to Discourage Open-Source Contributions [Nan]: The best way to discourage open source is to ignore all the pull requests people submit. Then no one will want to work on your project and will keep all their fixes to themselves. (
'19 Jun 18Added Tue 2019-Jun-18 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Github issue etiquette [Nan]: " To do open source well, when getting an issue or a PR, you should acknowledge receipt, notify when you start work, summarize the state of the issue, give periodic status updates with an ETA, inform everyone if you slip on your ETA, inform everyone if you're on track with your ETA, make internal communication explicit, make responsibility handoffs clear, notify on development completion, and notify about fix availability. Comments should always use a friendly tone, watch grammar and legibility, and talk to users on their terms." (
'19 Jun 17Added Mon 2019-Jun-17 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Social Status: Down the Rabbit Hole [Nan]: Social status seems best understood in terms of separating dominance and admiration. Admiration is the far more interesting part of social status and it's not clear how or why admiration evolved. Some speculation is that it helps us learn from other people and curry favor with potential teammates. (
'19 Jun 16Added Sun 2019-Jun-16 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
Nonfiction Writing Advice [Nan]: " Good nonfiction writing divides things into small chunks, breaks things up by changing sentence structure and including images, has a strong argument structure held together with key words, avoids unnecessary repetition, uses humor effectively, has concrete examples, uses the correct signals to convince those you're trying to convince, anticipates and defuses counterarguments in advance, makes use of concept handles, and breaks these rules when necessary." (
'19 Jun 15Added Sat 2019-Jun-15 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
The Four Methods of Innovation in Entrepreneurship [Nan]: " Spencer Greenberg talks about four ways to get innovative business ideas: (a) do what has only recently become possible, (b) do what only you know about, (c) do something that sounds stupid, or (d) do something that will be insignificant at first." (
'19 Jun 14Added Fri 2019-Jun-14 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
Democracy v Psychology: why people keep electing idiots [Nan]: " People prefer simple, confident people for politics because confidence inspires confidence and reducing the complexity of politics makes it more accessible and relatable." (
'19 Jun 13Added Thu 2019-Jun-13 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
Philosophical Health Check [Nan]: Do a quick check on your thinking with this quiz to make sure you don't hold any inconsistent beliefs. (
'19 Jun 12Added Wed 2019-Jun-12 11 p.m. CDT
in philosophy | a)
What is the best self defense trick you can learn within an hour? [Nan]: " The best self-defense trick is to avoid the fight in the first place. Otherwise, shine a flashlight into their eyes." (
'19 Jun 11Added Tue 2019-Jun-11 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Doing good through for-profits - Wave and financial tech [Nan]: Sendwave helps Kenyans send money back home with cheaper rates than Western Union or Moneygram. It is doing a lot of good wih a novel social enterprise for-profit model. (
'19 Jun 10Added Mon 2019-Jun-10 11 p.m. CDT
in effectivealtruism | a)
The Ability to Orient Yourself [Nan]: " How do you make progress when you can't really see where you're going? It helps to understand the fundamentals about what you're doing, understand why and where you currently are, learn from mistakes, and create processes." (
'19 Jun 09Added Sun 2019-Jun-09 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
What the literature says about the earnings of entrepreneurs [Nan]: " To date, there has been a paradox in the academic literature where many people believe entrepreneurs earn more on average when in fact research found that they do not. However, a new study found that when you separate entrepreneurs who own incorporated companies (e.g., startups) from those who don't (e.g., freelancers), it is the case that those who own incorporated companies earn more on average than similar people who stay salaried. Furthermore, those who own incorporated companies and are willing to give up control in exchange for growth (e.g., by taking external investment) earn even more than similar people who don't." (
'19 Jun 08Added Sat 2019-Jun-08 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
"What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True" [Nan]: " To know what works in software development, we need careful scientific evidence generalized from larger sample sizes. Unfortunately, little of this evidence currently exists and we can't settle age old debate like whether static typing reduces bus or whether agile methodology gets software done faster. What we do know, however, is that code complexity increases exponentially with code size and that code review is effective for reducing bugs." (
'19 Jun 07Added Fri 2019-Jun-07 11 p.m. CDT
in technology | a)
Defeat Procrastination By Scheduling High-Density Fun Into Your Day [Nan]: " High-density fun is fun that is actually fun (e.g., going to a movie, playing a video game, going bowling, etc.) as opposed to low-density fun that is mere distraction (e.g., browsing Reddit, browsing Facebook). Having too much low-density fun makes it harder to have high-density fun, which makes your life less fun." (
'19 Jun 06Added Thu 2019-Jun-06 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Netflix's Culture - Freedom and Responsibility [Nan]: " Values are found not in what the company says, but in who they hire and fire and great workplaces have great colleagues. Thus, Netflix aims to only keep the best people and give the rest generous severance packages. Good employees are determined by the "Keeper Test": "how hard would I fight to keep this employee if I knew they were leaving?" Netflix also aims to achieve freedom through good policies that help talented people get more done than bad policies that try to prevent recoverable mistakes." (
'19 Jun 05Added Wed 2019-Jun-05 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
This Is How You Identify A-Players (In About 10 Minutes) During An Interview [Nan]: " A-players have usually been promoted once or twice in a previous role, have lead big projects in a previous role, do research on a company before the interview, are confident without being cocky, are committed to continual learning, and ask good questions." (
'19 Jun 04Added Tue 2019-Jun-04 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
The only technique to learn something new [Nan]: " Well maybe not the *only* technique and not even *one* technique (that's just the clickbaity title talking). Basically, becoming really good at something involves a lot of motivation, a lot of reading, and then some trying focused on doing easy things first. It also helps to get a teacher and to study your own progress." (
'19 Jun 03Added Mon 2019-Jun-03 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
"No, online classes are not going to help America's poor kids bridge the achievement gap" [Nan]: " Online classes are great, but they're only really useful if you already know how to learn on your own and have really good study habits. For those who don't, going to school is to learn how to learn and the real-life relationship with the real teacher is crucial." (
'19 Jun 02Added Sun 2019-Jun-02 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
How To Make Something People Give A Shit About [Nan]: " The best way to make things people will care about is to design a product for a concrete real-life person you know (e.g., yourself or your mother) and then see if they actually like it." (
'19 Jun 01Added Sat 2019-Jun-01 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
What the Seed Funding Boom Means for Raising a Series A [Nan]: Seed funding is now 4x as plentiful but Series A funding has not budged. This creates false expectations for a lot of new entrepreneurs who raise a good seed round and think their Series A round will be easy when in reality it is now 4x harder than it was (with more competition from the plentiful seed money). This means that you should take enough seed money and be frugal enough with your seed money to be able to show concrete progress and metrics to prove you deserve a Series A on more than hope and dreams. (
'19 May 31Added Fri 2019-May-31 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
Dread the Hiring Process? Here's How We Fixed Ours [Nan]: " Job ads should not look like they're filling in blanks with random adjectives but should paint a compelling picture of what the day-to-day of the job is like and what makes your job unique and exciting. You also need clear criteria of who you want to hire prior to writing your job listing with realistic but high expectations. Your interview process should then simulate the actual work environment as much as possible and test for technical skill in addition to other important skills such as taking direction, communication style, applying feedback, personality, etc." (
'19 May 30Added Thu 2019-May-30 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Our Principles for Assessing Evidence [Nan]: " GiveWell, an evaluator of research for helping reduce the burden of global poverty, focuses on evidence that shows attributable, representative, cause-and-effect relationships, usually focused on strong randomized experiments that demonstrate particular campaigns are working (strong "micro" evidence) and that these campaigns are related to large-scale declines in their target goals (strong "macro" evidence). It's also important to focus on avoiding publication bias within studies by examining the incentives and biases of the authors." (
'19 May 29Added Wed 2019-May-29 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
The Decision-Maker: A Tool For a Lifetime [Nan]: " A twist on the pro-con list, where each pro and con are scored from 0 to 10 on how much they matter. The pro-points and con-points are then summed, and the decision is made in favor of changing the status quo if the pro-points equal or exceed twice that of the con-points." (
'19 May 28Added Tue 2019-May-28 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Creating a Microservice? Answer these 10 Questions First [Nan]: " Microservices need to be integration tested, well configured, well secured, discoverable, load-tolerant, backward dependency failure-tolerant, forward dependency failure-tolerant, upgradable, monitorable, and measurable." (
'19 May 27Added Mon 2019-May-27 11 p.m. CDT
in technology | a)
Expected Value Without Expecting Value [Nan]: " When asked, some people prefer to save 10 people for sure rather than save 10,000 people with 10% probability, even though the second choice leads to a higher *expected* amount of lives saved. Also, people prefer having a 10% chance of saving 10,000 people rather than let 9,000 out of 10,000 people die, even though these two choices are identical and just described in different ways." (
'19 May 26Added Sun 2019-May-26 11 p.m. CDT
in ethics | a)
The correct response to uncertainty is not half-speed [Nan]: "If you're uncertain about whether doing something is a good idea, you shouldn't kinda do it. You should either try it and see if it works or not do it at all." (
'19 May 24Added Fri 2019-May-24 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
"The importance of "gold standard" studies for consumers of research" [Nan]: "There is a trend in social science experiments toward fewer, higher funded studies. This may be a bad thing if it means that we're losing generalizability. However, it also seems like a good thing as only well-funded studies can overcome many academic biases, improve the ability to synthesize multiple studies, and provide the ability to assess external validity." (
'19 May 23Added Thu 2019-May-23 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
"What journalists get wrong about social science, according to 20 scientists" [Nan]: "Journalists often oversimplify and overgeneralize research and obsess too much about the latest findings even if they are contradicted by the bulk of the literature as a whole. Research itself is frequently ungeneralizable because of the wide use of college student populations and self-reports. Journalists often misrepresent small differences, statistical signficance, correlations, and technical terms. …Worth noting the irony that this is a journalistic account of social science." (
'19 May 22Added Wed 2019-May-22 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
How We Got off the Addiction to Venture Capital and Created Our Own Way to Profits [Nan]: "After failing to create a bogus vision of a $1B+ company and sell that to VCs for a bogus Series A round, the company Skift took their seed funding and decided to just become profitable on their own merits without further VC money. …and they seem to be doing well." (
'19 May 21Added Tue 2019-May-21 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
How I Stumbled Upon The Internet's Biggest Blind Spot [Nan]: "What is not venture backable in tech right now, that tech absolutely cannot do without? Open source software. Our tools are not in great shape and despite some myths, there is not good funding for open source. Everybody is building software, but ignoring the tools we need to build them. There is an enormous disconnect between project owners and their stakeholders. This is a relatively new problem." (
'19 May 20Added Mon 2019-May-20 11 p.m. CDT
in technology | a)
How to Be a Program Manager [Nan]: A program manager helps improve the product by being the voice of the user and engaging in debate with the programmers about what the project should look like. It's important that the program manager be a peer of the developer (rather than a manager or underling) so that there is no power dynamic that affects the debate. It's also important the program manager earns the genuine respect of the programmer (and vice versa). (
'19 May 19Added Sun 2019-May-19 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Reframing the Debate about Payday Lending [Nan]: "Many of the perils of payday loans seem overestimated, but there is a present risk of people taking out too many loans to pay off previous loans." (
'19 May 18Added Sat 2019-May-18 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
5 Tips for Cultivating Psychological Safety [Nan]: "Cultivating psychological safety is important for motivating the risk-taking and high initiative needed for good employees. This is done by giving honest feedback, asking tough questions, embracing mistakes, celebrating effort along with results, being humble with not knowing, and inviting private criticism of management." (
'19 May 17Added Fri 2019-May-17 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Time Travel in Doctor Who [Nan]: "The rules of time travel in Doctor Who are dynamic; exactly what you would expect from a show that tries to keep as many options open as possible to continue the indefinite story generator, without making things *too* implausible." (
'19 May 15Added Wed 2019-May-15 11 p.m. CDT
in science | a)
Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others except possibly futarchy [Nan]: " Futarchy is where policy decisions are made based on the outcomes of prediction markets. It looks like futarchy would lead to reliably better decisions than democracy without compromising democracy's goals, because prediction markets are as accurate as possible without being corruptable." (
'19 May 14Added Tue 2019-May-14 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Guns and States [Nan]: " - Simple scatterplots that connect gun ownership and "gun deaths" are entirely driven by gun suicides. However, adjusting for many cofounders does appear to show a correlation between gun ownership and homicide rates that could be causal." (
'19 May 12Added Sun 2019-May-12 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
"I analyzed 250 SaaS pricing pages, here's what I found" [Nan]: " Most SaaS sites don't have pricing because deals are complicated and need to be customized. Furthermore, most enterprise customers buy at any price. Of SaaS's with prices, most have four named pricing packages with a free trial, ordered low to high by price. Few SaaS's mention a money back guarantee." (
'19 May 11Added Sat 2019-May-11 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
Where My Perfect Reasoning Utterly Failed [Nan]: " Does warm water sometimes freeze faster than cold water when placed in the same conditions? "Absolutely no way," you might say a mere minute after I heard the claim. But how confident should you be in this opinion? Not very." (
'19 May 10Added Fri 2019-May-10 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
Radical Candor: The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss [Nan]: There is an axis with caring personally and challenging people directly. Challenging without care makes you an asshole but caring without challenging is even more dangerous as it doesn't push people to succeed. (
'19 May 09Added Thu 2019-May-09 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
"The "Spot the Fakes" Test" [Nan]: " If an area of study is genuinely valuable, it should be able to distinguish fake arguments from real arguments." (
'19 May 08Added Wed 2019-May-08 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
Why Are Projects Always Behind Schedule? [Nan]: " Projects are estimated by breaking it up into steps, estimating median time to complete each step and summing the result. However, this process underestimates the statistics about interdependent parts, where there is a much higher chance that individual steps will underperform the median rather than outperform the median. This makes the median project take 1.6x longer than it would be predicted from the sum of the median parts." (
'19 May 07Added Tue 2019-May-07 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
"Things You Should Never Do, Part I - Rewrite Your Codebase from Scratch" [Nan]: " Rewriting the codebase from scratch is a terrible decision because the problems can usually be solved via *relatively* simple refactors. Rewriting from scratch makes you lose codebase memory of bugfixes, takes too long, and reworks too much that was already fine. Lastly, there is absolutely no guarantee you'll do a better job the second time." (
'19 May 06Added Mon 2019-May-06 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Normalization of Deviance in Software - How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal [Nan]: " Messed up practices result from people not following rules, people thinking that it is okay to break the rules, inefficient and stupid rules that people want to not follow, imperfect and uneven knowledge, people being afraid to speak up, people not wanting to look bad, and bad incentives that make people want to not look bad instead of fixing things." (
'19 May 05Added Sun 2019-May-05 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
The Sandwich Shop Start-up [Nan]: "There's a difference between a business, aimed to make a sustainable profit, and a start-up, aimed at just getting lots of VC funding. If you don't have the skills to turn a profit at a halfway decent sandwich shop, your start-up will never become a business." (
'19 May 03Added Fri 2019-May-03 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
Evidence Based Scheduling [Nan]: " Project estimates can be constructed by cutting up the project into parts, collecting data on historical length of how long it took to complete each part (with distributions), and then combining the estimates." (
'19 May 02Added Thu 2019-May-02 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
How to Not Lose an Argument [Nan]: " If you want to argue with someone about something and get them to genuinely change their mind, you have to be gentle and avoid making them feel like losing the argument means they're inferior as a person. This is harder to do than it sounds." (
'19 May 01Added Wed 2019-May-01 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
Epistemic learned helplessness [Nan]: " It seems acceptable to refuse to believe something even when it is proven to you, since smart-seeming people can make all sorts of things sound true even when they're not." (
'19 Apr 29Added Mon 2019-Apr-29 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
Your TV is lying to you about who has abortions [Nan]: " Most TV characters get abortions because it interferes with their career, but in reality most people get abortions because they are not financially prepared to have a child. Women who get abortions on TV are, on average, much whiter and wealthier than those who get abortions in real life." (
'19 Apr 28Added Sun 2019-Apr-28 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Who Y Combinator Companies Want [Nan]: " TripleByte created nine profiles of "typical" engineering applicants and they found that Y Combinator companies (whom TripleByte helps people apply) were all over the map with regard to who the companies wanted to hire, with the majority focused on liking product-focused employees and disliking people with an enterprise (Java / C#) background." (
'19 Apr 27Added Sat 2019-Apr-27 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
Public Awareness Campaigns [Nan]: " The evidence on whether public awareness campaigns work is very mixed and it would be somewhat surprising if they did work, given how few cities run them." (
'19 Apr 26Added Fri 2019-Apr-26 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
Pairing with Junior Programmers [Nan]: " The best thing to do when onboarding junior programmers with pair sessions is to not type on their behalf, but help guide them figure out what to type on their own." (
'19 Apr 25Added Thu 2019-Apr-25 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
Tony Schwartz's Internet Addiction (and Why You Should Care) [Nan]: " The internet is more dangerous of a distraction than television, because you don't bring televisions with you to work or carry portable televisions in your pocket." (
'19 Apr 24Added Wed 2019-Apr-24 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Big Company vs. Startup Work and Compensation [Nan]: " It looks like unless you are explicitly *founding* a company, it's a better bet to work in a big company for better compensation and about equal levels of learning and interestingness." (
'19 Apr 23Added Tue 2019-Apr-23 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
Dunning-Kruger and Other Memes [Nan]: " It's common to see popular views about what the "science" says that misrepresents what actual studies say. For example, the Dunning-Kruger effect doesn't say that people who know less think they know more… it says people are less likely to say they are in the bottom or top quartile of knowledge even if they are, typically underestimating or overestimating their knowledge. Furthermore, more income does make people happy, even beyond the magic $75k/yr, but there's a logarithmic relationship. Also, hedonic adaptation doesn't happen as often as we think and it is inconclusive whether type systems make people better programmers." (
'19 Apr 22Added Mon 2019-Apr-22 11 p.m. CDT
in rationality | a)
Glass invented meta-analysis to prove someone wrong [Nan]: " Meta-analysis is about taking in all of the studies regardless of their flaws and then doing statistics on all the results to adjust for each flaw and get an overall result in a more accurate way than merely "vote counting" the studies individually." (
'19 Apr 21Added Sun 2019-Apr-21 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
LivingSocial Offers a Cautionary Tale to Today's Unicorns [Nan]: " What it looks like when your start-up is rapidly declining instead of rapidly growing, and the danger of the VC-first multimillion-investments-before-any-profits company philosophy." (
'19 Apr 20Added Sat 2019-Apr-20 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
What I've learned from sitting next to a pro salesman [Nan]: " Someone who doesn't answer email will answer a phone, so call your prospects. Use small-talk and know your prospects, using their names and asking about their children (assuming you have a pre-existing relationship). Use intonation correctly and always end the conversation with something concrete." (
'19 Apr 19Added Fri 2019-Apr-19 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Leave work unassigned and see who steps forward [Nan]: " One way to get people to step up to leadership positions is to make it clear that some work is valuable and give people the space to do that work, but not explicitly assign it to anyone, and see who steps forward." (
'19 Apr 18Added Thu 2019-Apr-18 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
The UX of UP: Urinals and Usability [Nan]: " Learning good UX techniques through good urinal design: keep interactive elements apart, give each tappable ample hit area, design with everyone in mind, and keep it simple." (
'19 Apr 17Added Wed 2019-Apr-17 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
Distribution vs. Innovation [Nan]: The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation. (
'19 Apr 16Added Tue 2019-Apr-16 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
The Cook and the Chef: Musk's Secret Sauce [Nan]: " Musk is (allegedly) able to do what he is able to do (create multiple successful companies simultaneously) because he starts by identifying what would be valuable and what it takes to get him there and then goes for it in a creative manner without taking cues from common wisdom. I like the overview, but I find it lacking and naïve in a few areas." (
'19 Apr 15Added Mon 2019-Apr-15 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
The 666 Roadmap [Nan]: " A good potential planning method is to make a six-year plan, a six-month plan, and a six-week plan, at differing levels of depth." (
'19 Apr 14Added Sun 2019-Apr-14 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
How to email Jim Wales (or any important person) and get a response [Nan]: " (1) say what you are doing without buzzwords or fluff, (2) say how important person can help, (3) say how it benefits important person, (4) say nothing else." (
'19 Apr 13Added Sat 2019-Apr-13 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Five Mistakes SaaS Startups Often Make with Pricing [Nan]: " (1) using a complex and unintuitive pricing model, (2) not using annual prepayment, (3) not increasing prices over time with increased demand, (4) not structuring proposals correclty, and (5) using incorrect price discovery questions (e.g., you should ask people about relative price not how much they would buy)" (
'19 Apr 12Added Fri 2019-Apr-12 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
The Microservices Cargo Cult [Nan]: " Microservices have many benefits, such as better scalability, cleaner architecture, independent deployments, and smaller codebases. But they're also complex, and have a lot of overhead in deployment and data storage. A well-crafted monolith with semin-independent libraries and clearly-defined interfaces can be the best of both worlds." (
'19 Apr 11Added Thu 2019-Apr-11 11 p.m. CDT
in technology | a)
The Lack of Controversy over Well-Targeted Aid [Nan]: " While there are a lot of aid critics out there (William Easterly, Angus Deaton, Dambisa Moyo), none of them are critical of the kind of well-targeted individual-to-individual developing world giving emphasized by GiveWell top charities." (
'19 Apr 10Added Wed 2019-Apr-10 11 p.m. CDT
in development | a)
Figuring Things Out [Nan]: " The skill about how to figure things out seems very important for success in life. You can potentially improve at figuring things out by trying more things, cultivating patience, and avoiding environments where trying things is discouraged." (
'19 Apr 09Added Tue 2019-Apr-09 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
"#DisruptTechInterviews using psych methods, maybe!" [Nan]: We can get to better tech interviews through psychology by figuring out what we want in our hires and figuring out reliable and valid ways of testing for those qualities. And we can find those ways through psychology research methods by developing tests and testing against known positive and negative cases. (
'19 Apr 08Added Mon 2019-Apr-08 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
What it's like to be on the data science job market [Nan]: " A guide to data science interviews and how they can be kinda terrible by not knowing what they want in a hire and asking dumb questions that don't really test for good hires. A useful reflection not just for aspiring data scientists, but any programmer going through interviews and any hirer running interviews." (
'19 Apr 07Added Sun 2019-Apr-07 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
Setting the default [Nan]: " What is considered reasonable is what is considered default by our culture, and this can make problems hard to resolve." (
'19 Apr 06Added Sat 2019-Apr-06 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
The startup framework to validate your idea before you spend $1 [Nan]: " Validate your idea by writing down the problem (and not the solution); figure out who might typically buy your product; come up with a list of 50 prospects; send them all messages asking to chat; chat with them about the problem (not the solution) and see if it is in their top three problems, how they solve the problem already, and whether they'd pay for a solution; design the solution with their feedback." (
'19 Apr 05Added Fri 2019-Apr-05 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
How to avoid the biggest mistake you can make as a new software engineer [Nan]: " The biggest mistake is not prioritizing learning. You can learn on the job by specifically taking a job at a high-growth company; asking for help; seeking out code reviews; writing many small commits; picking tasks that teach you new skills; learning from failure; and reading textbooks, articles, blogs, etc." (
'19 Apr 04Added Thu 2019-Apr-04 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
How to be awesome at programming (and get an awesome job) [Nan]: "If you have an awesome job, you can do awesome things. If you do awesome things, you can tell people about how awesome you are. And if you can tell people how awesome you are, you can get an awesome job. This is great, but how can you break into this cycle? If you're in a crappy job, you'll just perpetuate a cycle of crappiness. Instead, you can try to do something awesome on the side or quit and build something awesome yourself." (
'19 Apr 03Added Wed 2019-Apr-03 11 p.m. CDT
in career | a)
The Beggar CEO and Sucker Culture [Nan]: Would your CEO give you a 33% raise just because you asked for one? No? Then why do you give your CEO 33% more time (moving from a 40hr week to a 60hr week) for free just because that's the culture? Don't give into the sucker culture that celebrates busyiness without actually getting yourself anywhere. (
'19 Apr 02Added Tue 2019-Apr-02 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Preventing burnout for programmers [Nan]: " Burnout happens because of repetitive physical and mental stress. Some suggestions for combatting burnout is to eat well, sleep well, exercise, have a routine, avoid overworking (working only eight pomodoros a day, five days a week), dedicate 20% of time for goofing around with technology, going to programming meetups, invest in using and attaining mastery with the best programming tools, indulge in non-programming projects, and consider switching jobs/projects." (
'19 Apr 01Added Mon 2019-Apr-01 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Why GitHub is not your CV [Nan]: " GitHub is not valuable as a resume because (a) it lacks customization by the user, (b) it lacks important context, (c) it is not primarily intended as a coding portfolio, and (d) open source requires time even the best people don't have and shouldn't have to make, which plays into a dangerous workaholic culture." (
'19 Mar 31Added Sun 2019-Mar-31 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Let 1000 Flowers Bloom. Then Rip 999 of Them Out By the Roots. [Nan]: " At a certain threshold, around ~100 engineers using the same tool, it's worth it to allocate full-time engineers to improving productivity with that tool for everyone else rather than work directly on the job at hand. This also implies that in the beginning it is good to let each team do things their own way, but when teams scale, this can get in the way of high-impact opportunities to maximize productivity by standardizing around one awesome tool." (
'19 Mar 30Added Sat 2019-Mar-30 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Stop the Robot Apocalypse [Nan]: " Amia Srinivasan does a better job than anyone else I've seen at critiquing effective altruism, focusing on whether EA is offering any new moral insight, whether EA is too conservative and neglects the potential for radical change, and whether it's too closely related to objectionable utilitarianism. I don't think any of these critiques undermine EA, but they're good to keep in mind." (
'19 Mar 29Added Fri 2019-Mar-29 11 p.m. CDT
in effectivealtruism | a)
Millionaires Don't Use To-Do Lists [Nan]: " The calendar is a better place to manage tasks than a to-do list, because you can specifically allocate time to complete tasks and ensure everything will be completed on time." (
'19 Mar 28Added Thu 2019-Mar-28 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Lessons Learned from Reading Postmortems [Nan]: " Most large failures in software companies, as measured by reading publicly-available postmortems, are related to (1) insufficient error handling, (2) not properly handling configuration changes, (3) hardware failures such as lack of power, (4) people being in the position where they can ruin something by accident, and (5) insufficient monitoring." (
'19 Mar 27Added Wed 2019-Mar-27 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
A Way to Detect Bias [Nan]: " If you have a random sample of job applicants with roughly equal abilities and if you can objectively measure the applicants' performance once hired, you can measure hiring bias by seeing if certain groups of applicants outperform others - indicating that exceptional ability is needed to outweigh the bias against that group in hiring. This example can be generalized to detect all sorts of bias." (
'19 Mar 26Added Tue 2019-Mar-26 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
The GOP Primary Party Rules Might Doom Carson and Cruz [Nan]: " Surprisingly, moderate GOP candidates have a structural edge over more conservative candidates, because more moderate Republican primary voters are heavily advantaged in the way that the GOP primary works because of the geography of where moderate Republican primary voters live and how Republican primary delegates are distributed." (
'19 Mar 25Added Mon 2019-Mar-25 11 p.m. CDT
in politicalscience | a)
What Developmental Milestones Are You Missing? [Nan]: " Developmental psychology emphasizes the development of a "theory of mind" - knowing that your mind is different than others. Just because you like something doesn't mean that other people will like that same thing, because they have different minds. A lot of people have grasped this, but have you grasped additional implications, such as why people have different political beliefs?" (
'19 Mar 24Added Sun 2019-Mar-24 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Negative News [Nan]: Stories that are bad for some people but good for others are easily spun into stories that are solely negative by focusing on the bad stories. This can make the world seem worse than it really is. (
'19 Mar 23Added Sat 2019-Mar-23 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
"Redistribute wealth? No, redistribute respect" [Nan]: " An interesting perspective - rather than solely focusing on redistributing wealth to make society more equal from a monetary standpoint, we should be careful to recognize that money is not the sole determinant of a healthy society. While it's important to make sure everyone has a living wage, it's important to still have respect for those earning much less." (
'19 Mar 22Added Fri 2019-Mar-22 11 p.m. CDT
in policy | a)
What is the link between reducing mortality and increasing the world population? [Nan]: " While the evidence connecting mortality to fertility (including "overpopulation") is complex, this review suggests that population growth is rarely above 1:1. That is, every one life saved will approximately be offset by one less birth due to reducing fertility rates. Though the reason for this is far more complex than women having less children due to there being less childhood deaths - instead it also includes effects of greater nutrition, economic empowerment, education, and easier access to family planning and contraceptives." (
'19 Mar 21Added Thu 2019-Mar-21 11 p.m. CDT
in development | a)
The best and worst ways to detect a liar [Nan]: " Detecting a liar by body language - even using much acclaimed "microexpressions" - seems harder to do than it sounds, and most people do only barely better than chance. What does seem to work is to use open questions and lure the liar into creating a web of deceit, and doing things like asking them to report an event backwards in time to make it harder to maintain the facade. You can then focus on changes in confidence and in the details they are giving. This technique, as opposed to monitoring body language, was 20 times more likely to detect lies, with an overall 70% success rate." (
'19 Mar 20Added Wed 2019-Mar-20 11 p.m. CDT
in random | a)
Teaching is selling [Nan]: " Have you ever tried to teach someone something, only to have them forget most of it? This is because, consciously or subconciously, they don't think the issue is important. A key solution is to frame your teaching as a solution to a specific problem, just like I did with this description." (
'19 Mar 19Added Tue 2019-Mar-19 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
What are your altruistic motivations? [Nan]: " A lot of people are suffering and it is easy to help them with just a few thousand dollars. Do we have a moral obligation to do this? Should we feel that this is an exciting opportunity? Nate Soares argues neither - there is no objective morality and guilt is a bad motivator, but there's also nothing exciting about lots of suffering. Instead, it's a solemn goal we can take on to make the world the way we want it to be." (
'19 Mar 18Added Mon 2019-Mar-18 11 p.m. CDT
in effectivealtruism | a)
How do you onboard new software engineers? [Nan]: " This article argues that onboarding is important and underrated. Rather than having the most senior engineer focus on mentoring new people, it should be the person who learned it most recently. Junior engineers should teach other engineers. It's also important to have a standardized environment (e.g., Boxen) and get people contributing to production early. Lastly, people overemphasize learning programming languages when it's equally important to work on learning internal tools and focus on personal development (e.g., confidence, debugging skills, learning how to learn, etc.)" (
'19 Mar 17Added Sun 2019-Mar-17 11 p.m. CDT
in management | a)
The Startup Naming Field Guide [Nan]: " A quick guide for naming your start-up. They suggest starting by laying a foundation - determining what your brand should be, who your users are, what they're like (psychographics), and what people are currently using instead of your product (direct and indirect competition). They then suggest generating names (but not looking at domain names yet), and then evaluating a final list by (a) looking at it against your brand, (b) seeing if it's easy to say, and © asking other people about it." (
'19 Mar 16Added Sat 2019-Mar-16 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
The Book of Graham [Nan]: " "I could picture Eric at our east coast Christmas dinner in his startup T-Shirt, his sunglasses still on his head. 'Every day we wake up and tell ourselves we have to just fail faster,' he'd say. My father would have a stroke. In six generations, our family had not failed once. Many Y-Combinator founders pay themselves less than $60k a year, about half of what you make your first year in finance […] I had put together my own presentation for him. I called it: 'Science.' I slid my iPad in place of his and began my pitch. Slides 1-5 were dedicated to the complete failure of venture capital as an asset class over its entire history. I had charts and quotes from the world's most famous economists. Slides 6-10 listed all the defunct Y-Combinator companies, laid out in three columns in size 6 font. Next to them, the handful of wins looked insignificant." (
'19 Mar 15Added Fri 2019-Mar-15 11 p.m. CDT
in entrepreneurship | a)
A cautionary tale of learning how to code [Nan]: " "Without further ado, here the big mistakes I see new coders make all the time: (a) Switching languages or frameworks frequently, or deluding themselves into thinking they can become proficient in all of them. (b) Personalizing their development environment with exotic tools, rather than more conventional tools that can be reliably used while collaborating with others. (c) Trying to learn tools like Docker and Famo.us because they're new and exciting, even though they haven't yet mastered more fundamental technologies." (
'19 Mar 14Added Thu 2019-Mar-14 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Why content goes viral [Nan]: " It's correlation and not causation. More viral content is typically longer (>3k words); has at least one image with proper Facebook/Twitter previews; invokes awe, laughter, or amusement; is a list (e.g., "Top X reasons to Y", with the magic X being 10) or an infographic; looks trustworthy; is promoted by at least one well-followed person; is re-promoted many times by you (might not go viral the first time); and is posted on a Tuesday." (
'19 Mar 13Added Wed 2019-Mar-13 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Distrust your data [Nan]: " A tale of why red states may not actually consume more porn than blue states. Five ways data can easily go wrong: (a) sloppy proxies, (b) needlessly dichotomizing, (c) correlation does not equal causation, (d) bad ecological inferences, and (e) data naivete." (
'19 Mar 12Added Tue 2019-Mar-12 11 p.m. CDT
in metascience | a)
How to Scale a Development Team [Nan]: " Teams of less than five can get things done independently, but with the fifth person, there's a tipping point where two problems occur: (1) too much communication because it takes too much time to keep tabs on 6+ people and (2) too little communication because people, unaware of the others, end up duplicating work. This is solved with adding a bit of planning, like Pivotal Tracker and standing meetings. No more tools are needed. However, on the ninth person there is another tipping point where stand-ups become too long and Pivotal Tracker becomes too crowded and things begin again to break down. At this point, the team needs to be split into 2+ smaller teams with (a) clear spheres of authority and (b) clear interfaces to other teams. But be careful, as "[d]raw the fences in the wrong place, and you'll create coordination problems that make things even worse[, though f]ind the right places to divide and you'll see a massive increase in focus, happiness, and productivity." (
'19 Mar 11Added Mon 2019-Mar-11 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
Completion-centric planning [Nan]: "Make sure you (1) know all your projects, (2) what it would look like for those projects to be completed, and (3) strive to get projects to completion so you no longer have to work on them. Maybe spend an hour a day on the project most close to completion, regardless of priority?" (
'19 Mar 10Added Sun 2019-Mar-10 11 p.m. CDT
in productivity | a)
The Copywriting Checklist [Nan]: " "Good headlines are 'End Result Customer Wants + Specific Period Of Time + Address The Objections.' (e.g., 'Your home sold in 90 days or I'll buy it', 'Hot fresh pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or its free'). Pitch: concisely state the user's problem as a question, precisely state your solution. It's important to borrow credibility by talking about what Fortune 500 companies use your software, or use solutions similar to your software, or just include a quote from someone famous. Also, have 2-4 testimonials (no more, no less) scattered throughout the page. Have a very clear call to action (e.g., a 'buy' button) Need to reverse the risk (e.g., a money back guarantee). Helps if that reversal is outlandish (e.g., 110% refund). Anchor the price to something (e.g., 'For the price of a Frappuccino, you can learn every step I use to write profit-pulling copy'). Have an FAQ below the buy button." (
'19 Mar 09Added Sat 2019-Mar-09 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Why We Can't Solve Big Problems [Nan]: " Back in the 60s-70s, we did crazy bigthings like go to the moon. But now we don't have the Cold War to motivate us, and instead we're back to focusing on hard problems that are less sexy, like poverty. What's the point of mining asteroids when there's plenty of mining left to do in Texas? What's the point of colonizing the Moon when we have plenty of empty space in Kansas? This article provides a brilliant retrospective of where we've fallen short and where we haven't.-" (
'19 Mar 08Added Fri 2019-Mar-08 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Alcoholics Anonymous: Much More Than You Wanted to Know [Nan]: " (a) Good research is hard, (b) It's more likely than people expect that when you have a bunch of different behavioral interventions, they all end up being about equally effective (or equally ineffective), (c) "brief opportunistic intervention", which is merely a doctor asking a patient to consider quitting alcohol, can be surprisingly effective." (
'19 Mar 07Added Thu 2019-Mar-07 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
How rich governments use compassion as an excuse to let thousands of migrants die [Nan]: " "[A]ll three governments say they're acting out of compassion. They claim that they're trying to save migrants from deadly border crossings by deterring them from making the journey to begin with. But their compassion is empty. There's a reason migrants make those journeys: the places they're leaving are more dangerous than the border journey itself. And by refusing to make the journeys any easier - or making them even more dangerous - the rich governments of the world are putting thousands of migrants in even more danger, both on the journey and at home." (
'19 Mar 06Added Wed 2019-Mar-06 11 p.m. CST
in immigration | a)
This Philosopher Wants to Change How You Think About Doing Good [Nan]: " "Imagine you're walking down the street and see a building on fire[. …] You run in […] and save a young child. That would be a pretty amazing day in your life[. …] But the most effective charities can save a life for $4,0, so many of us are lucky enough that we can save a life every year through our donations. When you're able to achieve so much at such low cost to yourself…why wouldn't you do that? The only reason not to is that you're stuck in the status quo, where giving away so much of your income seems a little bit odd." (
'19 Mar 05Added Tue 2019-Mar-05 11 p.m. CST
in effectivealtruism | a)
"Vote on Values, Outsource Beliefs" [SlateStarCodex]: " "Today I learned about social impact bonds. […] The basic idea is: government could save a lot of money if some problem got fixed. For example, if people stopped committing crime, they could spend less money on prisons. So they make a deal with a corporation. The corporation agrees to spend a certain amount of money to prevent crime for five years. And if crime goes down and the government saves on prisons, the corporation gets half the savings (or a third, or whatever). Zero taxpayer money gets risked. It is entirely up to the corporation to fund the problem-solving effort. If they fail, then it's their own loss. If they succeed, then the government pays them money, but less than the government made, so the taxpayers still get a profit. […] This is looking impressively close to prediction markets. Futarchy says 'vote on values, bet on beliefs'. Asking a corporation to invest money in crime-solving is a form of betting on belief - they are betting on what anti-crime programs will decrease crime most and win them the most reward. You still have the elected government deciding what bonds to place - voting on values - but you're outsourcing your beliefs to the corporation involved and giving them an incentive to get it right." (
'19 Mar 04Added Mon 2019-Mar-04 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
Five economic reforms millenials should be fighting for [Rollingstone]: " the job guarantee, universal basic income, the land-value tax, a US sovereign wealth fund, and public banking." (
'19 Mar 03Added Sun 2019-Mar-03 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
"Why we should fire the entire "financial advice" industry" [Mrmoneymustache]: " The real life-changing idea is early retirement (or extreme frugality) - you can live a really great life on $10K a year or so, and thus, with stocks, you can retire on $250K. With an after-tax income of $50K, you'll have what you need to retire after just six years of work (savings rate of 80%)." (
'19 Mar 02Added Sat 2019-Mar-02 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"Psychiatric hospitals are less "Cukoo's Nest" and more "Catch-22" [Squid314.livejournal]: " "When it gets cold or rainy, the hospital fills up with homeless people. Word has spread on the streets that if you go to the emergency room and tell the nurse that evil spirits are telling you to kill everyone, you will get a nice bed and three warm meals a day (the hospital meals, in contrast to all conventional wisdom, are really good). It can be hard to turn these people away, since bloodthirsty lawyers are circling the hospital waiting for you to make a Type II error ("So, Dr. Alexander, you're saying this homeless man walked right into your hospital and explicitly told you evil spirits were telling him to kill everyone, and you refused to even admit him to the hospital long enough to evaluate him more carefully? And this happened just before his shooting rampage at City Hall?"). Besides, many of the people with genuine mental illnesses are homeless, so you can't conclude much either way until you've done a proper evaluation which means letting them in for a few days at least." (
'19 Mar 01Added Fri 2019-Mar-01 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
The moral case for giving doesn't rely on questionable quantitative estimates [Blog.givewell]: " "To us, the strongest form of the challenge is not 'How much should I give when $X saves a life?' but 'How much should I give, knowing that I have massive wealth compared to the global poor?'" (
'19 Feb 28Added Thu 2019-Feb-28 11 p.m. CST
in costeffectiveness | a)
Do Unpaid Internships Lead to Jobs? Not for College Students [Atlantic]: " "The common defense of the unpaid internship is that, even if the role doesn't exactly pay, it will pay off eventually in the form of a job. Turns out, the data suggests that defense is wrong, at least when it comes to college students." (
'19 Feb 27Added Wed 2019-Feb-27 11 p.m. CST
in career | a)
Systematic Lucky Breaks [LessWrong]: "Many people can point to significant events that improved their lives in a positive way. They often refer to these as 'lucky breaks', and take it for granted that such events are rare. But most of the time 'lucky breaks' don't need to be uncommon-you can often reverse engineer the reasons behind them and cause them to happen more frequently. So when a one-off event ends up contributing a lot of value, you should systematically make it part of your life." (
'19 Feb 26Added Tue 2019-Feb-26 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
Cognitive Democracy: Condorcet with Competence [Marginalrevolution]: " "We usually think of democracy as a way of aggregating diverse preferences but we can also imagine that we share similar preferences and that what we disagree about is the best way to achieve those preferences. From this perspective, democracy can be thought of as a tool for information aggregation. Using simple probability theory, Condorcet showed in 1785 that even when each individual voter has only a slightly better than chance probability of choosing the bettier of two options the probability that majority rule chooses the better outcome quickly goes to 1 as the number of voters increases (the wisdom of the crowds)." (
'19 Feb 25Added Mon 2019-Feb-25 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
The Single Most Effective Method for Influencing People Fast [Spring.uk]: " "Influence techniques vary considerably in how effective, ethical and easy to perform they are. At the easy, more ethical end of the spectrum, is affirming someone's right to choose. This is a benign strategy which happens to have the handy side-effect of increasing persuasion. But what if you are looking to use a little more effort to get a lot more persuasion-power? Then perhaps the disrupt-then-reframe (DTR) technique is for you. A word of warning, though: the DTR technique is more of a cheap (but very effective) trick which some might find morally questionable. OK, with the health warning over, here's what they did in the original study which kicked off this whole line of research." (
'19 Feb 24Added Sun 2019-Feb-24 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
The Reason So Many People are Unemployed [Aaronsw]: " "A good way to wrap your head around this is to think about a much smaller case: instead of the whole economy, let's think about a now-famous babysitting co-op on Capitol Hill. Instead of dollars, the co-op used its own scrip that was worth an hour of babysitting time. When you wanted to go out, you'd pay a couple hours to someone else to watch your kids; then when they wanted to go out, they'd pay you or someone else to do the same for them. It all worked great for a while, until one day they found they had too few pieces of scrip. Every couple had only a couple hours left and, having so little, they didn't want to waste it. So they all decided to save it for a very special occasion. This was kind of an incredible situation - even though there were people who wanted someone to babysit their kids, and people who were willing to do just that, the deal didn't happen, simply because the co-op hadn't printed enough colored pieces of paper. Eventually the co-op learned their mistake, printed some more scrip and handed it out, and everybody went back to babysitting like before and were much happier for it." (
'19 Feb 23Added Sat 2019-Feb-23 11 p.m. CST
in economics | a)
Charity Cost-Effectiveness in an Uncertain World [Utilitarian-essays]: " "Evaluating the effectiveness of our actions, or even just whether they're positive or negative by our values, is very difficult. One approach is to focus on clear, quantifiable metrics and assume that the larger, indirect considerations just kind of work out. Another way to deal with uncertainty is to focus on actions that seem likely to have generally positive effects across many scenarios, and often this approach amounts to meta-level activities like encouraging positive-sum institutions, philosophical inquiry, and effective altruism in general. When we consider flow-through effects of our actions, the seemingly vast gaps in cost-effectiveness among charities are humbled to more modest differences, and we begin to find more worth in the diversity of activities that different people are pursuing. Those who have abnormal values may be more wary of a general "promote wisdom" approach to shaping the future, but it seems plausible that all value systems will ultimately benefit in expectation from a more cooperative and reflective future populace." (
'19 Feb 22Added Fri 2019-Feb-22 11 p.m. CST
in costeffectiveness | a)
The Virtue of Silence [SlateStarCodex]: " "Leah Libresco writes a couple of essays on an ethical dilemma reported in the New York Times. In the course of a confidential medical history, a doctor hears her patient is suffering from stress-related complaints after having sent an innocent man to prison. The doctor wants to know whether it is ethical to report the matter to the police. The Times' columnist says yes - it would save the poor prisoner. Leah says no - violating medical confidentiality creates an expectation that medical confidentiality will be violated in the future, thus dooming patients who are too afraid to talk about drug use or gay sex or other potentially embarrassing but important medical risk factors. But both sides are ignoring the much bigger dilemma lurking one meta-level up: is it ethical to debate this dilemma in the New York Times?" (
'19 Feb 21Added Thu 2019-Feb-21 11 p.m. CST
in policy | a)
How to Not Die [Paulgraham]: " Weekly meetings encourage a powerful norm of weekly progress, which moves things forward: "You've probably noticed that having dinners every Tuesday with us and the other founders causes you to get more done than you would otherwise[. …] Every dinner is […] a deadline. […T]he mere constraint of staying in regular contact with us will push you to make things happen, because otherwise you'll be embarrassed to tell us that you haven't done anything new since the last time we talked." (
'19 Feb 20Added Wed 2019-Feb-20 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"Anatomy of a Hack: How Crackers Ransack Passwords Like 'qeadzcwrsfxv1331" [Arstechnica]: " Ars Technica gave three experts a 16,000-entry encrypted password file, and asked them to break them. The winner got 90% of them in a few hours. And this includes passwords like "momof3gr8kds" and "correcthorsebatterystaple". " (
'19 Feb 19Added Tue 2019-Feb-19 11 p.m. CST
in technology | a)
Social Justice for the Highly Demanding of Rigor [SlateStarCodex]: " Some people claim "that social justice advocates irresponsibly take some undesirable outcome in minority groups, like poverty, and then assume it is the result of racism or sexism without considering other possible explanations. […] My counterargument is that although the first argument is true a depressingly large amount of the time, some people do more rigorous work and get the same result - that poor outcomes for minority groups are caused in large part by racism and sexism." (
'19 Feb 18Added Mon 2019-Feb-18 11 p.m. CST
in culturewar | a)
Three Ways to Advance Science [80000hours]: "There are three ways to contribute to scientific progress. The direct way is to conduct a good scientific study and publish the results. The indirect way is to help others make a direct contribution. Journal editors, university administrators and philanthropists who fund research contribute to scientific progress in this second way. A third approach is to marry the first two and make a scientific advance that itself expedites scientific advances. The full significance of this third way is commonly overlooked." (
'19 Feb 17Added Sun 2019-Feb-17 11 p.m. CST
in metascience | a)
On Intellectual Triage and Not Writing People Off [The Americanconservative]: "Terry Eagleton's bludgeoning review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion famously begins, 'Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.' I share Eagleton's frustration. But what doesn't bother me - or Eagleton either, I'm pretty sure - is Dawkins's rejection of religious belief in general or Christianity in particular. Suppose Dawkins were to say something like this: 'I don't really know that much about Christianity, but from what I do know I haven't seen anything that would cause me to take it seriously or to investigate it further.' I would have absolute respect for that position - because, after all, that's the position I'm in in relation to all sorts of beliefs: in Zoroastrianism, say, or telekinesis, or alien spacecraft in Roswell, New Mexico." (
'19 Feb 16Added Sat 2019-Feb-16 11 p.m. CST
in skepticism | a)
What it Feels Like to Be Bad at Math [Mathwithbaddrawings]: "As I procrastinated, spending more time at dinner complaining about topology than in the library doing topology, I realized that procrastination isn't just about laziness. It's about anxiety. To work on something you don't understand means facing your doubts and confusions head-on. Procrastination pushes back that painful confrontation." (
'19 Feb 15Added Fri 2019-Feb-15 11 p.m. CST
in productivity | a)
"God, Christianity, and Meat" [Huffingtonpost]: "an interesting religious perspective on vegetarianism: "I was delighted to learn about this rich tradition of incorporating vegetarian diets into spiritual practice, but I admit that it first surprised me. It certainly is not something most Christians in America know about. If you do some searching like I did, though - even simply by searching "Christianity and vegetarianism" on the Internet - it's easy to see just how important the idea of peace between all creatures has been in the Christian moral imagination." (
'19 Feb 14Added Thu 2019-Feb-14 11 p.m. CST
in animals | a)
Ethics as What's Worth Caring About [Philosophyetc.net]: "The utilitarian can simply say, 'I care about people! I want everyone to be as well-off as possible.' And that seems a pretty attractive goal! There seems no doubt that people's welfare (and, more broadly, the welfare of sentient beings) is worth caring about. Is anything else comparably important, or worth caring about? Take promises. People sometimes criticize utilitarianism on the grounds that it affords no intrinsic significance to promise-keeping, so utilitarians may be expected to break promises (at least when it's sufficiently clear that it really would be for the best). But does it really make sense to care about promises more than people? That sounds terribly perverse! Promises can be a useful tool for coordination, and hence serving our collective interests. But when promise-keeping and human welfare diverge, surely it's the latter that really matters." (
'19 Feb 12Added Tue 2019-Feb-12 11 p.m. CST
in ethics | a)
Six Psych Tips for Creating the Ideal Workspace [Spring.uk]: " (1) avoid open-plan; (2) both messy and untidy desks have their place, depending on the type of outcome you are looking for; (3) prefer curvy environments over straight edges, (4) have a room with a view or a picture of a view, (5) include lots of plants, and (6) decorate." (
'19 Feb 11Added Mon 2019-Feb-11 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)
Google has eight simple rules for being a better manager [Govexec]: "(1) be a good coach, (2) empower your team and don't micromanage, (3) express interest in team members' success and personal well-being, (4) be productive and results-oriented, (5) be a good communicator, (6) help employees with career development, (7) have a clear vision and strategy, and (8) have key technical skills so you can be an advisor." (
'19 Feb 10Added Sun 2019-Feb-10 11 p.m. CST
in management | a)

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