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The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

chris-martin.org

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Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#281

Post by MoneyMeMoneyNow »

jeffbee wrote: post #237
tristor wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a matter of basic media literacy you should realize that you have no rational basis for this claim. Cool story. Here's a rational basis, a link to the unredacted memo that was leaked to Gizmodo and published online, confirmed to be legitimate by James Damore: https://web.archive.org/web/20170809021151/https://diversity... > The entire rest of your comment is pure fiction, by the way. What part, specifically? The…

A guy leaks a doc to Gizmodo, same guy authenticates it, and that works for you?

What? The outrage was caused by the leaked memo. If it were fake...why would he have gotten fired to begin with? You seem to be intimately aware with the 'real' memo, care to link some evidence to what was in it? Person who replied to you is consistent with my memory of the events at the time.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#282

Post by tptacek »

systemstops wrote: post #280
munificent wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the fact that the US was founded on enslaved Black people is considered a "new idea" is why we have failed to address cultural roots of that systemic problem. > The other Anglo colonies - Canada, Australia, New Zealand - never had slavery and ended up about as well off as the US. How well off are First Nations people in Canada and Aboriginal people in Australia and New Zealand?

How would you know when the problem is solved though? If you look at average earnings of groups and correct for IQ, the gap disappears. If you want all groups to score the same on tests of cognitive ability, we've been trying to do that for decades with no success. Every attempt to create a test where all groups get the same average have failed. Sorry, it sucks, but it's the truth.

I don't know what you're trying to say here, but the evidence for malleability of IQ and for SES influence on IQ --- IQ itself being a diagnostic output and not a latitudinal ranking of people by capability --- is pretty strong. It's important when having serious conversations about this to structure the causality correctly: "correct for IQ" sounds at first blush like you've established a causal role for IQ, but really you might be (and probably are) just manipulating whatever X variables are causally linked both to IQ and to other outcomes.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#283

Post by watwut »

edanm wrote: post #271
chneu wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. He had comfort and security to fall back on. His family was also loaded. He wasn't walking away from anything. He would have been fine if it didn't work. The reality is he had a safety net to fall back on. 99% of people do not.

From the point of view of a good 50% or so of the world (if not more), pretty much every Westerner has comfort and safety to fall back on.

Except it is simply not true that every Westerner has safety to fall back on. There would be no homelessness crisis if this was true.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#284

Post by edanm »

watwut wrote: post #283
edanm wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the point of view of a good 50% or so of the world (if not more), pretty much every Westerner has comfort and safety to fall back on.

Except it is simply not true that every Westerner has safety to fall back on. There would be no homelessness crisis if this was true.

I said "pretty much". The homelessness crisis in, say, the US, affects a relatively small portion of the population; from quick looking up figures, it's less than 1% of the population.

I'm no expert on any of this, but as far as I understand it, homelessness is usually 1. transitory, and 2. usually tied to other serious issues like mental health issues, drug abuse etc. It's usually not a "lack of resources".

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#285

Post by watwut »

pmichaud wrote: post #165
ryandrake wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just learned this quote now and I love it. Very true. Much of tech mythology, where we are told "started from nothing" actually started from a place of at least some capital and privilege.

I think in conversations like these most people on the successful side underestimate how valuable the starting advantages were, and most people not on the successful side overestimate how valuable the starting advantages were. Meanwhile almost everyone misunderstands what the advantages really are. People will talk about the $300k loan Bezos started with and think "boy golly, with 300 THOUSAND dollars, I could do any…

> Whereas the proverbial Bezos will think about the grit and determination it took to march for decades through treacherous financial and political swamps

I cant help, but these people are frequently the swamp. They fit right in, they create it and they create horrible environment for everyone else.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#286

Post by munificent »

systemstops wrote: post #280
munificent wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the fact that the US was founded on enslaved Black people is considered a "new idea" is why we have failed to address cultural roots of that systemic problem. > The other Anglo colonies - Canada, Australia, New Zealand - never had slavery and ended up about as well off as the US. How well off are First Nations people in Canada and Aboriginal people in Australia and New Zealand?

How would you know when the problem is solved though? If you look at average earnings of groups and correct for IQ, the gap disappears. If you want all groups to score the same on tests of cognitive ability, we've been trying to do that for decades with no success. Every attempt to create a test where all groups get the same average have failed. Sorry, it sucks, but it's the truth.

Knowing when the problem is fully solved is hard.

But we currently have a President who described participants in a white supremacist rally as "a lot of good people on both sides" so I think we are very far away from needing a precise definition of "done".

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#287

Post by solarmist »

umbra07 wrote: post #254
solarmist wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a good point. People tend to focus on money as the main form of privilege, but that internalized sense of “I belong here” might matter even more. It’s not just confidence—it’s a kind of default assumption that you’ll be taken seriously, that you’ll have options, that failure won’t wreck your life. I’ve seen it in startups too. Some founders take bold risks because they know, consciously or not, that if i…

Can't you just as easily make the opposite argument? Founders that have a safety net have less drive and motivation to give it their all, because they have a safety net. They simply just don't have the same pressure to not fail, because if they do - no biggie. The founder with no safety net, no real backup, needs to give it his all, because he's doomed if his idea doesn't work out.

I’m not sure you really can, at least not in the way it’s often portrayed. Founders usually need a high level of skill or a clearly transferable capability in something already valuable. That phrase gets repeated a lot, but the more I think about it, the more it feels like an oversimplification. Maybe there’s a version of it that works, but it’s probably more about reframing or uncovering hidden leverage than starting from zero.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#288

Post by systemstops »

munificent wrote: post #286
systemstops wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you know when the problem is solved though? If you look at average earnings of groups and correct for IQ, the gap disappears. If you want all groups to score the same on tests of cognitive ability, we've been trying to do that for decades with no success. Every attempt to create a test where all groups get the same average have failed. Sorry, it sucks, but it's the truth.

Knowing when the problem is fully solved is hard. But we currently have a President who described participants in a white supremacist rally as "a lot of good people on both sides" so I think we are very far away from needing a precise definition of "done".

[flagged]

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#289

Post by tptacek »

systemstops wrote: post #288
munificent wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing when the problem is fully solved is hard. But we currently have a President who described participants in a white supremacist rally as "a lot of good people on both sides" so I think we are very far away from needing a precise definition of "done".

[flagged]

"IQ gaps between groups" meaning...? I doubt very much that whatever statistic you're going to provide means what you think it does.

Re: The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis

#290

Post by watwut »

edanm wrote: post #284
watwut wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it is simply not true that every Westerner has safety to fall back on. There would be no homelessness crisis if this was true.

I said "pretty much". The homelessness crisis in, say, the US, affects a relatively small portion of the population; from quick looking up figures, it's less than 1% of the population. I'm no expert on any of this, but as far as I understand it, homelessness is usually 1. transitory, and 2. usually tied to other serious issues like mental health issues, drug abuse etc. It's usually not a "lack of resources".

The homelessness goes up and down woth economy and housing availability. Sure, people worh mental health issues are first to loose ... and being homeless makes all the mental health issues worst.

Like, common. And beyond homeless, you have people one paycheck away from being homeless. And people unable to pay for drugs they need - like insuline.

Yes, if all you know about West is what you see in movies, then everyone is rich.

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