Using that one particular statistic to make this point seems like an obvious use of bad statistics. The average or median is probably much more normal, and probably a huge number of computers worth a good chunk of money, but it doesn't sound that eyecatching so they choose to go with this particular number.

When I went to college in Berkeley I went to a couple rationalism adjacent events in the city and saw there was a huge overlap of that EA/Rationalism/Silicon Valley startups people. Never saw Sam Altman at those, but met a couple YC founders and other people who knew him and spoke generally well of him.

People can follow a value systems and still understand that other value systems exist.

The EA view of things is pretty simple to understand. Given the premise of limited resources, and a belief that all lives are worth the same, how can you best improve human livelihood?

Different people approach giving back to society in different ways. The EA way to approach the above is to crunch numbers and find what they think is the place where their limited resources can have have the largest impact.

My best friend's family does their part by joining their church to volunteer at food kitchens in poorer neighborhoods and hosting fundraisers for various causes throughout the year.

A Vietnamese coworker of mine used to give back by donating to a charity that gave scholarship opportunities to high achieving low income students in Vietnam.

It's not that complex to understand that different people have different value systems and how they view their tribe, people and the world.

And yes I agree that lots of people find people who hold differing views incomprehensible, but that's also normal aspect of humanity and not unique to those in EA.

From political differences, to philosophical differences, to religious differences, to any topic, many people have a hard time comprehending the worldview of others.

You can even just take the perspective from this article. There are a whole swath of people I've known that could not comprehend the idea that someone would be willing to give their kidney to a total stranger. They might understand if its someone the person knows, but a total stranger? Some might say that's insane and irrational behavior.

Lots of people can't see past their own perspectives on things, but I think it's uncharitable to suggest that EA is not just like any other group with some portion of people like that.

If you want a meritocratic institution that is actually reasonably priced and provide great educations, then that's what a state school is for. Or like the few private institutions that are actually meritocratic (MIT, caltech)

Elite schools are for the children of elites who will inherit some amount of that power (political, wealth, ect) and for a small cream of normal people who have the iq, eq and luck to be chosen. The goal is to let these people mix. That way in 20 years after graduation when a brilliant mathematician has discovers a powerful algorithm that he has an inkling that it could apply to the stock market, he can phone up a college roommate that had an extremely wealthy dad in finance. The rich heir roommate can join and fund the venture that might billions on the stock market. Or the fact that an official in the state department went to college with the then daughter of South Africa's president, chances are that daughter still is influential. They can talk and maybe broker some aspect of foreign policy. They are finishing schools for the elite. Whether we like it or not, society's next generation of elite includes the most capable children of the current elite. Evn if those children are less capable than the most capable of the general populace, they stand to inherit quite a bit and they will have an outsized impact on the country and world. Their parent's and ancestors influence is important in their acceptance process because it's important in real life.

There is no real solution to this. There's a reason that despite America growing in pop insanely, foreign applications increasing exponentially, billions being donated to them and everyone going to college, these elite institutions have barely changed class sizes.

The exclusivity and mixing of the different types of people is a feature of these places. If you somehow get these top institutions to be more meritocraric like MIT or Caltech or increase overall student body size like ASU all that will happen is that individuals with power, wealth and influence will simply slowly coordinate to send their kids to different schools and soon enough those schools will face this scrutiny again.

Now I can understand that it is extremely unfair that when all our Supreme Court justices, significant numbers of national politicians, power brokers and many individuals with outsized influence come from a few institutions. If you are one of the many intelligent, hardworking and capable individuals who don't get in when others who are probably just as good as you might, it is extremely annoying. Their entire trajectory of life is changed because of luck that you didn't get. But sometime life is like that. College does not exist in a vacuum and just like most things in life, influence and wealth are powerful.

Those with power tend to want their descendants to have some of that at least and they will do what they can to perpetute that.

I want to say I'm not saying that this is perfect or even great. I'm just saying the way humans work and the way incentive structures are setup, this is how it is. To not mention this is to be ignorant. If you want to improve the status quo you need to acknowledge the reality of the situation and plan around this.

I did not attend one of these institutions for the record.

Treat it like any form of behavior that creates a hostile work environment and thereby lowers overall workplace productivity. Businesses are incentivized to keep things running in the most productive method possible.

Discrimination costs your business in lowering employee productivity and other affects like possibly losing talent or opportunities. Warning discriminating employees that their behavior could cost them their job or simply firing them depending on the severity of the situation seems like a simple enough solution?

That though caste discrimination causes significant harm and problems in the Indian and Indian diaspora communities, not every, "bad thing", stem from caste discrimination in specific.

The idea that sexism and other terrible things can be prevelant issues that need to be addressed better but they are not necessarily related to caste.

That behavior suggests that Wyclef might have continued the same corruption that other Haitian politicians engaged in and maybe taken it a step further by leveraging his celebrity to also pocket money brought in as outside investment.

Again, maybe he couldn't be worse since other Haitian politicians would have and did engage in similar corruption, but it'd be a stretch to say that it's anything we should consider as "what if" that would had the real potential for positive change in the country.

I'm completely unfamiliar, but it wouldn't surprise me if for diagnosing? software like this to be used in an official medical capacity in America it would need to go through some sort of particular vetting process because if it isn't it might leave hospitals who use it open to lawsuits.

I can't see anything other than laws like that being abused by politicians and government officials to quell speech and create a chilling effect amongst the populace.

The situation the above commenter was bringing up was that in the near future your genetic information has a good chance of being used by insurance companies pre-judge you, your offspring and your relatives to raise or lower healthcare rates based on information found in that data.

Property tax is generally determined by the average price of housing in an area. California's prop 13 allowed people to lock in their property tax based on when they bought it. Its been beneficial for retirees and older folks in California who bought their houses decades ago and if forced to pay the taxes based on current valuation would be forced to sell their house and move.

Its received a lot of criticism from people who point out that it's inherently unfair and how that the tax level stays the same if the owner dies and passes the house on to their kids. It also receives a lot of criticism because it also applies to businesses. One particularly egregious example is a country club in the middlebof LA that exists on prime developmental land and normally would be paying huge taxes pays nominal fees and is only available to the extremely wealthy that can afford to join it.

Prop 13 did get some reform last November in regards to inheritance and flexibility for homeowners.

Before finding that subreddit, I didn't notice how just how commonplace casually insulting men was accepted.

I do understand the power difference that isn't one to one and why this sort of insulting is accepted, in that men are not a real minority like Jewish people are so culturally insulting men is a considered a punching up situation.

Still, I think the proliferation and casual acceptance of the rhetoric people use in this context is not exactly healthy for society.

Whoever gets the power to define what's acceptable and not acceptable speech is given too much power. You might trust that arbiter now, tomorrow, but do you honestly believe their incentives will always remain pure?

https://medium.com/@behoff/they-say-nothing-will-change-5c54...

The outrage over Cuties is some of the weirdest situations of political/cultural toxoplasma I've seen.

The movie has nothing that's considered abnormal to what pre-teens and teens are exposed and engage in modern western culture. Girls are exposed to the dances/ect that sexualize them everywhere from social media platforms (tiktok, ect) and in person (regular middle school/high school stuff). The dances in cuties are very meh in by those measurements.

The movie tries to take a look at this, "norm," and displays something that's somewhat normal in a movie format. It's especially weird that the movie got it's backlash from conservatives b/c the message is arguably somewhat conservative.

The story is a girl coming from a extremely conservative background embracing the supposedly pro-women modern liberal western culture. By showing this the character and the viewers question if modern western cultural attitudes to women and their sexualization is actually better than the treatment of women in conservative cultures.

SPOILERS: It ends with the character embracing some sort of middle path that leaves you asking if that's even possible.

Like if you believe in the backlash against Cuties and the sexualization of the kids in modern society, that backlash should be more directed a backlash against places like tiktok/ect that encourage pre-teens/teens to copy/perform sexualized dances for money/street cred.

Over the years we've seen a huge surge of individuals talking about the benefits of remote work and there are many. I'm not trying to ignore those benefits in any way, but there are downsides and I have little faith in most corporations to do a good job of addressing these new found problems in an optimal manner. And what works for some portion of the workforce (some amount of workers like open offices), might not be optimal for another significant portion of the workforce.

Speculating on possible problem points in articles about remote work:

I would guess they will simply see the savings in office costs and pass on very small portion of that, leaving employees with the need to now rent/buy bigger houses to allocate space for a permanent home office situation. Other problems include a possible increase in always on-call attitudes in that, managers will feel even more open to ask employees to work on something at non-standard hours since it's simply a matter of walking a couple steps to their desk. Workplaces are filled with humans and without causal interaction outside of standard work related meetings, I wonder how people will care about each other. Will employees have less empathy for each other since bonds between them are weaker? Things like asking for help someone on a task is harder if you're not as familiar with them. I wonder what other changes we'll see.

> “Telegram channels and websites that don’t belong to our government are the main source of information today as we cannot at all rely on state media,” said Roman Semenov, who follows the NEXTA channels and joined a rally in central Minsk on Wednesday evening. “It’s a Telegram revolution.”

On top of that this is article detailing how this particular technology, has made a significant impact for the protesters.

“The fate of the country has never depended so much on one [piece] of technology,” Viacorka said.

There have been a number of articles and news coverage of this topic. That this one article focused on the technology aspect of the protesters and protesting does not make it, "tech propaganda."

The second is because that looks very weird and improper. It's a government job and the person who works gets compensated. Not taking a salary would make his tenure and situation even more abnormal. It also sets a bad precedent for potential future holders of the job.

The better option would be to accept the salary and donate it alongside the fortune he has vowed to give away.