161–170 of 209 posts
PG, when you were looking at YC apps, how many +points did you give to candidates who worked at Google?
PG, I enjoy your essays a great deal. Often while reading the content I click on your numerically referenced notes. Clicking on the numbered reference takes you to the details of that note. Please link the number in the notes section back to the location in the essay. This way I can click the note in the text and read the note and then click the note reference to return to the essay content and continue reading. This…
use the back button?
Paul, how much of the conclusion did you decide on before starting the essay? It felt more like an attempt to convince us, rather than a revelation to yourself. Not that that's bad, but you didn't seem excited. What were your diffs?
I think the reason I didn't sound excited was the way this got written. I started it this summer, didn't work on it for months, and then started again in November. I rewrote it so many times that all that's left of the first version is the beginning, up to "Chinese example," and one paragraph in the middle that used to be in the beginning.
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You can show fairly quickly that the success of Caltech alumni in sciences, as measured by awards, is comparable only to the École Normale Supérieure (and possibly Phystech in Russia depending on how you count). Check out http://www.arwu.org/rank2008/ARWU2008_A (EN).htm The column 'Alumni' compares the number of Nobel prizes or Fields Medals won by Alumni to the number won by Harvard (in percent). Caltech scores 52.8…
Even more successful would be Cambridge University. 83 Nobel Prize winners in total. (31 Nobels from Trinity College, Cambridge alone!) http://www.cam.ac.uk/univ/nobelprize.html That said, Cambridge is a far bigger University than Caltech and others, but a large proportion of those degrees are awarded in non-science fields.
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this entire "lots of small firms are the future" meme is probably just wrong. paul graham knows a lot about websites but very little about the rest of the economy. show me the ten person company that can produce the equipment to generate and transmit electricity. or food production. where are all the ma and pa grocery stores? and banking...we have fewer banks now than ever and the number is still dropping. and PCs...…
Music production. Video production. Any industry where the capital costs are low, or where a small group of niche specialists can add a significant multiplier to the value chain are candidates for this sort of effect. As more industrial tasks are farmed out to large companies that specialize in flexible production it is possible that you will see this show up in industries that are currently have strong vertical inte…
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College admissions officers do not, as far as I know, follow up on the careers of the people they accept and see how they did. In Canada, one of the strongest selling points of universities is what fraction of their students got a job in a related field within X years of graduation -- so at least here, institutions do track this sort of data. In addition, there's a lot of work done to validate admissions processes ba…
I've heard that U.S. universities have similar "black books." It's too bad they don't publish their data, because that would be an interesting way to compare the performance of high schools.
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if anything it seems to screw them up That's why it's dangerous :) Buffet has it right: leave them enough so that they can do anything, but not enough so that they can do nothing.
It's dangerous, but not to society as a whole. I.e. Paris Hilton has the money that she uses for hedonistic purposes, but she won't be put into a position of power.
Paul, how much of the conclusion did you decide on before starting the essay? It felt more like an attempt to convince us, rather than a revelation to yourself. Not that that's bad, but you didn't seem excited. What were your diffs?
Actually there were a lot of surprises. That credentials are seals between generations; the distinction between direct and indirect methods of helping your kids; that sealing off direct methods promotes indirect ones; the emptiness of the explanation schools give of legacy admissions (which now seems to me as damning evidence as the practice itself); the precise connection between credentials, measurement, and organi…
A lecturely, authoritative voice seems inevitable as you move away from the excitement phase. But excitement may be more convincing.
And that's one advantage that blogs have over essays, that I hadn't considered. Being published so much quicker, it's easier to retain excitement. But I'm a bigger fan of essays. The medium still has steam left, even if you include it's other anachronisms.