181–190 of 223 posts
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I know friend of friend who went to Harvard Law like 15 years ago and she told me there is SO MUCH butt kissing going on there. You'd think people who got that far would be confident enough to rely on their own skills/study to get ahead BUT even at that level, there is a lot of butt kissing to get ahead.
It's the correct asses though.
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I think there's actually two things going on here. There's what this post is talking about, which is a general lack of understanding of statistics, which is likely true and correct, and likely for both reasons that are explored here. Then there's the reason to actually even talk about this specific instance, which is that there is a complete lack of operating on the assumption of good faith and clarifying intent befo…
> ...there is a complete lack of operating on the assumption of good faith and clarifying intent before making assertions as to other peoples intentions which is rampant currently. This is basically what all politics is. People projecting thoughts (or lack thereof) in bad faith on each other. Though it does seem that the fraction of society sucked into this toxic discourse has grown to cover practically everything la…
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> I think one advantage of computers is that what you produce at the end has to work - and if the code doesn't work or you don't know what you're doing, you're quickly exposed as a fraud. Is this actually true? You can bullshit coding...
Take the old guestbook example: if you can't add entries to the guestbook the code apparently doesn't work. No way around that.
Same with the guestbook. It may even work. But on the inside it’s a pile of unmaintainable crap.
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> I think one advantage of computers is that what you produce at the end has to work - and if the code doesn't work or you don't know what you're doing, you're quickly exposed as a fraud. Is this actually true? You can bullshit coding...
Take the old guestbook example: if you can't add entries to the guestbook the code apparently doesn't work. No way around that.
How do you go about proving this? In the real world people are going to dismiss it. If you are playing against a politician you will be told that you simply have a bad memory thinking that some things exist that really don’t.
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Yes, this was the opinion I came here to post, certainly my own profession of law is like this, at least where I practice in Toronto Canada but I can't imagine other places being much different. I think one advantage of computers is that what you produce at the end has to work - and if the code doesn't work or you don't know what you're doing, you're quickly exposed as a fraud. This is not the case in other fields li…
> I think one advantage of computers is that what you produce at the end has to work - and if the code doesn't work or you don't know what you're doing, you're quickly exposed as a fraud. This is very naive point of view. Think of how car repair shops bullshit customers (especially what was before some mitigating laws) and then multiply it by Pi or more
There are industries where lying is simply a stable equilibrium.
You need law to keep those businesses going and fair. Otherwise the lemons spoil it for everyone.
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I don't buy your arguments - at all. At the end of the day people have strong expectation about what software should do. If it doesn't do that, they will quickly notice. If they don't notice (now or in the future) things like your "off by one" errors, then that requirement wasn't likely that important to begin with. Now, I've seen plenty of "demo-ware" software that has been presented as something that was much more…
Let's say you have a for loop that is supposed to run once, but some "programmer" calls it a hundred times. The program still works, but it's a lot slower. Input lag on devices has doubled or tripled from the 1980s while clock speeds have increased drastically. Reddit and Hackernews do essentially the same task, yet Hackernews' load times are almost instant while Reddit takes more than a second to load at times. It's…
Noone wants to write low level code because learning it costs money, so instead we just throw more hardware at the problem until it goes away...
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A question: is really fifth the best ? Seeing FIVE=5 always irks me, as it's an extra indirection for nothing. What do I gain with it ? The ability to change it to FIVE=6 ? OUTPUT=5 maybe but then console.log(OUTPUT) gains you nothing. Maybe NB_LEGS=5 and console.log(NB_LEGS)
This is why I put the word probably in the comment and why I stated that for this particular requirement I actually don't think this is the best approach. You can always screw around with code, redefining code blocks in C would be fun to do. But I did have situations where FIVE = 5 changed to FIVE = "five" or FIVE = "5" or FIVE = "vijf" (Dutch) or FIVE = "....." (ok, the last one is hypothetical, but maybe you want f…
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> power would concentrate and it would start putting pressure on the state The state itself is a concentration of power. Industry wants to co-opt it for that very reason.
Not saying that the state is a good thing. It's slightly better than a corporation though, because it's under some sort of democratic control. Ideally though, all concentrations of power should be dismantled.
Whatever power you use to reduce concentrations of power would undoubtedly become quite powerful.
I think that it's probably better to attempt to reduce the size of any one concentration of power, and set them all up watching each other.
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Not saying that the state is a good thing. It's slightly better than a corporation though, because it's under some sort of democratic control. Ideally though, all concentrations of power should be dismantled.
I'm not sure that's realistic, with respect to concentrations of power. Whatever power you use to reduce concentrations of power would undoubtedly become quite powerful. I think that it's probably better to attempt to reduce the size of any one concentration of power, and set them all up watching each other.
Agreed. It would be great if power was as decentralised as possible and if individuals would take an active part in their (self-)government.
So much of everything is about connections and reputation. Tech in particular holds up a guise that people are chosen and ascend because they are “good”, meaning, they are good at what they do. That’s part of it, but it’s an insufficient part, and you can do pretty well in a career being solidly average at what you do. The real currency in my experience is one thing - relationships. Do I think this person likes, resp…
But do you know who else does this for you? A dog.
I've never promoted anyone who likes me or respects me or vouched for me, I promote those who are reliable and have have skills to achieve the task at hand, one who will not betray themselves or their company for some kickback.