81–90 of 214 posts
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No, people usually have the arithmetic mean in mind.
People have the arithmetic mean in mind, but their intuition of "average" is actually the median, or even more commonly the modus. When somebody says "Average people are X", they usually mean "Most people I've encountered are X", which is the modus. Hell, I just did that in this exact sentence!
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Silicon Valley is still somewhat an exception to the rule about appearances. In what other area do the rich people dress exactly like the poorest? Remember the hubbub when Zuckerberg wore a hoodie to a meeting regarding the Facebook IPO. That might be laughed off in Silicon Valley but I know many people in other parts of the country that would view it as insulting for someone to show up to a business meeting wearing…
What's insulting here is that Zuck is trying to keep the "hoodie-guy" image despite his unimaginable wealth. You can't have the cake and eat it.
A very rich guy persists in wearing the hoodie he wore while doing the work that made him rich? Where do you see hypocrisy there?
I read the whole article and do not agree. Here in Silicon Valley the importance of appearances has become marginal. Yes, you have to be clean, presentable, but that's it. After that you need the skills, talent, knowledge and aptitude to perform your job. And you need that everyday, to keep your job, in this hyper-competitive environment. I was a poor starving immigrant student at one point. I did fine without even m…
Disagree entirely. Silicon Valley is just as superficial as the rest of them, except the points your'e being judged from are a somewhat different set from mainstream society. In the Valley tech scene (and all tech scenes everywhere) the respect we afford people is heavily influenced by a lot of cultural markers. Access to newfangled gadgetry, neighborhoods we live in, even freaking toe shoes . Don't have the spare ti…
The one quibble is that I do ask for a Github account and I don't think it's the same sort of marker. It's a skill-based metric first[1], a cultural one a very distant second. Toe shoes don't provide a risk-mitigation signal. A Github profile does: it lets me see what you do. It's not unlike publishing in academia--it gives me a window into what you do, making it easier for me to hire the right person because I know what I'm getting. And I'd rather not hire than hire the wrong person, because hiring the wrong person hurts everyone.
[1] - Yes, it (probably) implies you have side projects and that you're writing open source. You're right about that. But the primary reason I want to see a Github profile is to make sure you can code.
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> then you should realize averages exist because half of the people are below it. Only true of median.
I think that the colloquial use of the term "average" actually means the median. That's how I have seen it used, anyway.
"Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon."
This myopic focus seems to be more common on technology forums than elsewhere. I am interested as to why this is the case. Probably, a technical education lends itself well to analyzing the validity of individual details but not reasoning at a structural level.
I read the whole article and do not agree. Here in Silicon Valley the importance of appearances has become marginal. Yes, you have to be clean, presentable, but that's it. After that you need the skills, talent, knowledge and aptitude to perform your job. And you need that everyday, to keep your job, in this hyper-competitive environment. I was a poor starving immigrant student at one point. I did fine without even m…
Silicon Valley is still somewhat an exception to the rule about appearances. In what other area do the rich people dress exactly like the poorest? Remember the hubbub when Zuckerberg wore a hoodie to a meeting regarding the Facebook IPO. That might be laughed off in Silicon Valley but I know many people in other parts of the country that would view it as insulting for someone to show up to a business meeting wearing…
I cannot speak to the gendered or racial points (white male, here), but during my time in NYC I experienced first hand the escalation of opportunity that tracked with my escalation of signaling clothing and accessories. I was lucky enough to be poached from my job as a movie theater cleaner/attendant by the manager of a 5th Avenue Kenneth Cole. At the time I was struggling and would eventually end up temporarily home…
Clarification: when you say "family", do you mean "wife and kids" or "parents and siblings"?
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What's insulting here is that Zuck is trying to keep the "hoodie-guy" image despite his unimaginable wealth. You can't have the cake and eat it.
I'm sorry, are you saying Zuck should be required to dress his socioeconomic class?
While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think her arguments are very strong. I personally think people make bad decisions to buy things or do things not on the premise of it being an "investment", but because most of us are very weak. We do the things we do because we are victims to advertising and peer pressure. You think they spend billions on advertising for nothing? If you read this and you are thinking, "No I…
> then you should realize averages exist because half of the people are below it. Only true of median.