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A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

jeffarchibald.ca

251–260 of 323 posts

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sixty hours is fine when you enjoy your work. Sixty hours a week was a short week in the old days, the conveniences of a modern society allow us to choose more free time should we want it, all you have to do is venture outside of our comfortable environments and you will find people wishing 60 was the max. Having grown up on a farm all I can say is, you don't notice it unless the wrong stuff keeps piling up. Its amaz…

It's a bit easier when your job doesn't require you to think all the time. You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the physical fatigue farm work brings.

>You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the physical fatigue farm work brings.

Do you have a source for that? I find it highly unlikely that the human body needs less rest after spending 10 hours a day performing manual labor than it does after a few hours of programming.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#252
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") That's not what falsifiable means. > I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works. That statement, taken…

>> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") > That's not what falsifiable means. You truncated the original, cut out an essential word, then argued against the edited version. Here's what I said: > Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its…

My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world. At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false.

When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future. Mental illnesses are very much real and because of that it is entirely possible to measure the effectiveness of a psychological treatment.

The problem with many psychological treatments is the same problem we have with nutrition - doing studies is excruciatingly hard because the validity of a test is compromised if the patients aren't kept under observation 24/7, because patients have a tendency to lie or to forget, so short of keeping them locked in a cage for the next 10 years, we lack the capability of keeping them under observation and this is necessary to eliminate variables that could have an impact on the result. Doubly-blind tests are also excruciatingly hard sometimes - for example, in regards to nutrition, the only way one could conduct such a test would be to control the patients' basic senses. And in the future, we may be able to directly measure the body's reaction to a treatment, which would eliminate the need for A/B testing entirely.

Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#253
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") > That's not what falsifiable means. You truncated the original, cut out an essential word, then argued against the edited version. Here's what I said: > Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its…

My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world. At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false. When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the f…

> My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world.

Not in science. In science, falsifiability means the failure of an empirical test, a failure that invalidates a claim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Quote: "The concern with falsifiability gained attention by way of philosopher of science Karl Popper's scientific epistemology "falsificationism". Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience. This is often epitomized in Wolfgang Pauli famously saying, of an argument that fails to be scientific because it cannot be falsified by experiment, "it is not only not right, it is not even wrong!"" [emphasis added]

> At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false.

No, falsifiability in science means that an empirical test -- a test against reality -- proves a claim to be false. In science, falsifiability is not about philosophy or rhetoric, it is about empirical tests.

> When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future.

In psychology, defined as study of the mind, none of those are falsifiable in a scientific sense, because the mind is not a source of empirical evidence.

> The problem with many psychological treatments ... [etc.]

Your paragraph explains why psychology is not and cannot be scientific.

> Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.

On the contrary, that is exactly what it means. No objective empirical evidence on which similarly equipped observers can agree, ergo no falsifiability, ergo no science.

In any case, falsifiability is only one missing property in psychology. Another is psychology's tendency to be satisfied to describe what it should be explaining. Are testable, empirical explanations required for science, or are descriptions adequate? To find out, read my description of a phony cure for the common cold posted above. It shows that explanations are a requirement for science, and to avoid all sorts of quackery.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#254
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science. Pretend to be a scientist and post your evidence. Here's mine -- the director of the NIMH has recently ruled ( http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... ) that the DSM (psychology's "bible") may no longer be used as the basis of scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. The director went on to say:…

Yawn. There are very few scientific laws compared to the body of scientific knowledge. Most scientific concepts are relegated to theory rather than law as they are are amenable only to inductive proof. The only scientific ideas that have the status of law are those that are amenable to deductive proof. You are very long winded, and you present as if you think your understanding is better than it actually is.

You have failed to address any of my arguments, standard arguments that clearly define what science is and is not. And you have decided that ad hominem is a better approach, even though a logical error. Given your inability to defend your position, this isn't too surprising.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#255
post #69

When I was 25 to 29, I used to spend a lot of time at work. For a while, it just came naturally because I was so eager to learn; I'd stay at work reading books, programming, looking for information on the web and newsgroups (I hadn't internet access at home back then). But at some point in 1998, for a few months we entered in death march after accepting to be the rescue team for a doomed, undoable project; I've worke…

Let me guess. You put in 3 times the effort but did not get 3 times the salary and at the end of it all you didn't even get a bonus to compensate you fairly for the health issues that were created. Nowadays, if anybody finds themselves in this position, take Aspirin every evening as a prophylactic (talk to your doctor) and cut out all junk food. Eat lots of vegetables, and a bit of meat but avoid sweet things and car…

In fact I've got a small bonus in the end, something like an added month of salary. I'm allergic to aspirin, and of course for months I've survived on all sort of deliverable junk foods: sandwiches, pizzas, bad sushis and the like.

As a team I think we did quite OK. Imagine the tension when you're live in front of 2 billion viewers, and you know the friggin' software just barely works for one hour at a time before crashing, and that one of you must sit next to the director at the main mixer panel while the others are monitoring the screen for the fateful OpenGL glitch, ready to switch machines any second by hand. Then you realise that someone forgot to install the latest software update that we just compiled in the afternoon therefore the running software doesn't manage sudden-death playoffs. And the score is 1-1 at the 90th minute. Talk about pressure :)

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit easier when your job doesn't require you to think all the time. You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the physical fatigue farm work brings.

>You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the physical fatigue farm work brings. Do you have a source for that? I find it highly unlikely that the human body needs less rest after spending 10 hours a day performing manual labor than it does after a few hours of programming.

Not the human body, but the human brain.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#257
post #181

To everyone who jumped in to comment that 60+ hours at work is just fine, because they can do it. I have to say, stop equating work with progress. Busiest time in my life was when I was studying for the California Bar exam. According to the program I was doing, I was expected to study 12 hours a day. Most people I knew did 12+ hours of studying at least, all of them passed the bar. I did about 6 hours a day (+ other…

Sixty hours is fine when you enjoy your work. Sixty hours a week was a short week in the old days, the conveniences of a modern society allow us to choose more free time should we want it, all you have to do is venture outside of our comfortable environments and you will find people wishing 60 was the max. Having grown up on a farm all I can say is, you don't notice it unless the wrong stuff keeps piling up. Its amaz…

Sixty hours a week is fine if the only thing you enjoy is your work.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#258
And what about when you have two jobs - 40 and 20, when they are unrelated lets say - front end development to pay the bills and number crunching side project for fun - they exhaust differently. There are a lot of developers that put more than 20 hours weekly on side projects or professional level hobbies.

It is probably the more of the same that makes the quick decline after 40 hours.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#259
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science. The remainder of the discussion is quite tedious, and shows that the OP has a very confused notion of mind body separation (hint, by and large they are not, whether you're a dualist an epihenominist or something else - I tend to something else but wouldn't feel confident to write my viewpoint down). What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not pos…

> OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science. Pretend to be a scientist and post your evidence. Here's mine -- the director of the NIMH has recently ruled ( http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... ) that the DSM (psychology's "bible") may no longer be used as the basis of scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. The director went on to say:…

For fun replace 'psychology' with 'quantum physics'. Is it also not science?

1. Contradicts some natural laws

2. Is not explained by the natural world except in reference to itself (often due to changes beyond a certain scale)

3. Not necessarily testable against the empirical world (yet)

4. Always up for debate (so good there) as is psychology.

5. Falsifiable or not depending on your stance, in a similar way to psychology, in that there is a lack of complete understanding. The swan example in the wiki article could not be applied for instance because all of the facts and observations are not available (again... yet.)

As for Kahneman (and many other psychologists), if you believe that he starts with the conclusion and refuses to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation, you may have skipped some very important parts of Thinking Fast and Slow. The book in question goes over many examples where the outcomes do not fit what is expected and lead to discovery.

Not arguing exclusively against what you are saying, just pointing out that there are fields that utilize the scientific method, which by their very nature are not entirely beholden to the current 'laws of science' often because their laws have not been fully laid down or explored yet.

Medical science moved past simply treating based on symptoms due to a great deal of work. Who's to say psychology can not do the same? There is still much to learn.

Re: A 60-Hour Work Week is Not a Badge of Honour

#260
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wager that more than 25% of "full-time" employees in an office-worker setting are spending less than 30 hours per week actually working . Probably far more than 25%. How many facebook posts do you get at all hours of the workday? Assuming their job isn't social media community relations manager, those people aren't working ; they're simply attending their job.

This doesn't count. Working 20 hours a week but still having to sit an an office 40 hours a week makes me pretty much as horribly depressed as putting in 40 hours of effort at the same office.

I hear ya, but if that's the situation you irretrievably (in your own mind) find yourself in, make the best of it. Put in your solid, no-BS 20 hours of honest work and then when you're exhausted mentally, fill the time with web browsing related to your job, and even personal errands (shopping, travel booking, the online portion of socializing, whatever).

If you are genuinely good and the 20 hours represent genuine best-efforts, you're very unlikely to stand out negatively in terms of results produced.

But, you probably aren't as stuck to a 40-hour ass-in-seat job as you think. Find remote work; become a freelancer. Some of those have a higher risk profile than sitting down and shutting up 40 hours a week as an employee. No one said life would be trivially easy, but for those of us that can write code, our lot in life is already 2 or 3 standard deviations above the mean, IMO.

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