I peeked at Q7 - Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics (Target Questions dropdown in the Controls Panel) - unsurprisingly Copenhagen remains the most accepted QM interpretation. Kind of interesting, as Rovelli et al. are really pushing relational or informational interpretations these days, which isn't even one of the responses (unless it is contained in "other".)
The rest of the questions are about cosmology - I think these questions (mostly) won't be answered without new data.
Yes, it's a completely misleading, clickbait title.
Most physicists do, in fact, agree on the overwhelming majority of things. That article is just a list of a few things that there isn't yet a consensus on.
"The borough also says visitors encounter its "Play Smart Rules" when entering the park, including a specific instruction: "Do not twist chains.""
So the town buys crappy swings, knowing full well that kids are going to spin them (who hasn't done this a million times as a kid?) Then they slap up a sign telling the kids not to do that. Basically entrapment.
Here's an idea for them: maybe the town shouldn't cheap out on unsafe equipment for children...
My company makes dangerous equipment like lawn mowers. Because of this, I have to go through training on how to design equipment to be safe.
And the rule is very clear. If there is any possibility of an issue, you need to redesign it so the problem can't happen, you need to put gaurds in place so the problem can't happen, or only if those two fail, are you allowed to put up a warning sign. That is an ordered list so if anything is possible in the previous step you cannot go to the next.
In this case a chain that can take twisting is obvious and so the sign won't protect them from liability should someone get hurt from twisting the chains.
You're both right. What you're describing is liability. A warning does not guarantee safety from liability suits, that's why the other options are preferable (only being a Chinese or outside-of-the-west manufacturer guarantees safety from liability suit).
But the problem with twisting chains is that it needs a warning.
And so both putting in the law, and arresting the kid, are a way to protect the borough, a government organization, from liability when something goes wrong.
If the town feels that arresting children is a good use of public money they that's their right. At some point the citizens have to actually care about how their town operates if they want it to get better. Most townspeople care about UX as much as f2p mobile shovelware developers.
As a reminder - if you put an unsafe swing on your property and just had a sign as the only thing stopping it from injuring a child and a child got injured, you'd be automatically liable under the "attractive nuisance" doctrine.
Had this experience recently (not 9/11 memory, but some other event.) I 100% thought it happened, but a friend showed me that what I remembered was impossible.
I've always had a problem with Graeber's definition of exactly what a "bullshit" job is. Every time one is identified, the "well, akshually..." comes out, and often for defendable reasons.
Take "social media coordinator" - we had some young person at our Fortune 500 company have this position, which led to some eye rolls. But is it really "bullshit" if she keeps an exec from posting something embarrassing, which could damage the stock price? I guarantee you that companies have reasonable justifications for every position.
AI is more a tool that allows a productivity boost per employee, like all other automation tools (e.g. SolidWorks almost completely automated mechanical drawings, so drafting is not a thing any more - something I was told in high school, BTW, that would always be in demand...)
>Graeber classifies a job as bullshit if society would be no worse off (or even >notice) if such job(s) disappeared, and names five classes of meaningless jobs: >flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters.
That's how Graeber defines it - but as I said above, every time someone points to a specific job and says "that's bullshit" it usually turns out that there is a reason for it.
Really, it should be "bullshit industries", rather than picking on individuals with jobs. Entire companies are doing harm (e.g. tobacco, soft drinks, most of the social media ecosystem, etc.) If AI starts closing truly harmful industries, then we can declare bullshit jobs are being reduced. I am not hopeful in the short term.
This is why you should not use low-resolution summarys as exhaustive and authoritative.
"Bullshit jobs are jobs which even the person doing the job can’t really justify the existence of, but they have to pretend that there’s some reason for it to exist. That’s the bullshit element."[1]
He talks about it a lot and the book is 368 pages. Of course you will get some variations on the general theme with some embellishments to get it to hit home. But the key aspect, which he mentions repeatedly, is the part about "even the person doing it thinks it is worthless".
"A lot of bullshit jobs are just manufactured middle-management positions with no real utility in the world, but they exist anyway in order to justify the careers of the people performing them. But if they went away tomorrow, it would make no difference at all.
And that’s how you know a job is bullshit: If we suddenly eliminated teachers or garbage collectors or construction workers or law enforcement or whatever, it would really matter. We’d notice the absence. But if bullshit jobs go away, we’re no worse off."
Yes, he claims that also many people know that their job is "bullshit", but clearly that is not a necessary and sufficient condition. Believing your job is bullshit might be a necessary piece of his definition of a bullshit job, but that makes my objection to his definition even stronger.
My problem is, he is focusing on the individual job - not the industries. Graeber seemed to think there are some vast class of jobs that can disappear in any given company, e.g. in middle management, but it is simply not the case that companies are that overstaffed. Even if the person believes their job is "bullshit", it doesn't mean that it isn't bringing value. Trust me, if you really could cut 50% of all middle manager positions and the company would still go along fine, it would happen.
The fact is these companies are aware that there are jobs which can be cut and not impact overall productivity, that is part of the motive behind the industry layoffs.
However, in too many cases they involve middle management in the process of identifying where those cuts should happen and well, even when those same middle managers know they are the ones most suited to go, the permanent human ability to be self serving, self delusional, and dishonest really does stack up against much of those 'bullshit' jobs being removed from the balance sheet.
I sadly share this as a physicist. To be fair, sometimes this arrogance can be useful. I worked at the boundary between domains my entire career where there aren't "experts" per se. But yeah, barging into an established domain without some humility generally leads to embarrassment - especially Nobel winners (e.g. https://www.newsweek.com/nobel-prize-winner-who-doesnt-belie...)
It's much easier to create a poison than a medicine. The things that would harm biological life vastly outnumber things that restore health. So just because Novartis didn't succeed at creating an incredibly precise and specific medication does not mean all the AI in the world can't make a crude bio-agent.
And yet we aren't extinct, whether by someone's design or accident. Heck we don't have significant deaths occurring over time due to biological poisons. Most deaths at still overwhelmingly via conventional weapons.
I've said this in other threads, but the increase of safetyism is partially because we have lost the informal social networks of the single-income household. Kids running around always had an adult nearby, even if they felt "alone". And if the kids did have a conflict, the adults either left them alone to resolve it, or the adults would come to some sort of informal solution.
I think the general increase in household wealth, the fact that there are simply fewer children, and "the phones" all contribute as well, but are basically downstream of the structural change of the two income household.
I don't have a good solution, because it will take collective action.
Goddamn, this is a disappointment. Everyone thought (and probably still thinks) Lp(a) was/is causal. There is a very "neat" story about how the shorter LPA genes (with fewer Kringle repeats) leaves the Lp(a) cholesterol particle's surface exposed, and the shorter genes over-expressed their products. Although I don't think anyone demonstrated the specific damage mechanism, it sure seemed like that could be a smoking gun.
That said, I look forward to seeing the actual data. Since they enrolled patients with previous coronary events, the damage may have already been done, and lowering Lp(a) levels might not do much in that case. Still, it was hoped that the damage would stop accumulating, leading to noticeably fewer events.
Beautiful theories once again murdered by ugly facts.
"Divide their annual recurring revenue by the total headcount. If that number is below $150K, the company is either pre–product market fit or scaling too early."
Most of the time, if you are a technical person joining a company that already has revenue, you are probably already too late for a significant equity stake. And if a company already has $300k of revenue per employee, I'd have trouble calling it a "start-up". Just my experience - I am sure there are exceptions.
Some of the other advice is good - finding out how many shares are outstanding and the current valuation is the info you need to judge what the shares in your offer might be worth. I agree that if the company is evasive on this info, it is a red flag.
Start-ups are risky - but if it doesn't work out, move on. It isn't the end of your career.
The Oneida's also produced a violent assassin: Charles Guiteau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_J._Guiteau (I guess it is debatable they "made" him, same as with the Zizians)
Let's hope Thiel and company redirect that democracy-destroying energy into making quality flatware sometime soon...
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