devalgo's comments

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees

> I have several friends that actively choose to be contractors because they prefer the (legally protected) flexibility to decide their own hours, among other things

I'm sure the flexibility is nice when you are making $100+ per hour but drivers make a tenth of that and struggle to get health insurance

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: Facebook fired an employee who posted evidence of preferential treatment

>have been constructed to build a specific narrative about diversity and inclusion

Just for reference, the first line in the memo is literally: "I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes"

But you kapnobatairza, you actually know what was in Damore's heart better than he himself. You are an oracle and a prophet and the bringer of truth. 2+2=5 amirite.

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: Facebook fired an employee who posted evidence of preferential treatment

Just for fun let's try a few:

Memo line: "Women, on average, have more Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men"

Research summary: "I summarize data from two meta‐analyses and three cross‐cultural studies on gender differences in personality and interests. Results show that gender differences in Big Five personality traits are ‘small’ to ‘moderate,’ with the largest differences occurring for agreeableness and neuroticism (respective d s = 0.40 and 0.34; women higher than men). In contrast, gender differences on the people–things dimension of interests are ‘very large’ (d = 1.18), with women more people‐oriented and less thing‐oriented than men." https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1751-9004...

Wow.. totally misrepresented the research there...

Memo: "Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average"

Research: "There are no sex differences in cognitive ability but enduring sex differences in competitiveness, life goals, the relative emphasis on agency versus "connection." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0306988060076911...

Omg how misogynistic...

Memo: "Women, on average, have more Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)."

Research: "Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality inventory data from 26 cultures (N =23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas" https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.81.2....

Omg he totally misrepresented the research there...

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: Facebook fired an employee who posted evidence of preferential treatment

Stefan Molyneux is a pig but your characterization of Damore is low effort and more or less completely wrong. If you read the memo it is a relatively straightforward review of standard Biology and Psychology research. There's virtually nothing controversial in it. If you have issues with it you have issues with science. Which given the "decolonize" science lunacy recently isn't surprising. China is laughing all the way to the bank as both sides of the political divide in the West largely and the US specifically abandon logic and reason for superstition and dogma.

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: Facebook fired an employee who posted evidence of preferential treatment

Molyneux is detestable but SLPC has no credibility. They recently settled a defamation lawsuit against Majid Nawaz an anti-extremism Muslim reformer who they labeled as an anti-muslim extremist. It's in the same vein as people who call Ben Shapiro, an orthodox jew, a Nazi. It's simply ridiculous hysterics.

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: Gold price rises above $2k for first time

>Direct helicopter money into everyone's bank account...oh, wait, we are doing that

Except the amount is peanuts, peer countries are doing 2k/mo without issue but its somehow a struggle or hyperinflationary for the US to do 2400 over 6 months?

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

People always parrot this but how many Doctors do you know with no degree? Take a poll at Google engineers and see how many are actually self taught and have no degree. How many Wall Street bankers/traders/etc have no degree? How many US Senators have no degree? How many World Leaders in history have had no formal education? Not counting dropouts, what percentage of Billionaires have no college education? The reality is still that the overwhelming majority of "successful" people still have degrees. You can argue what the root of this is whether it's the added knowledge or signalling of the degree, or intrinsic self motivation of the person, etc. but that fact still remains.

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: Philosophers on GPT-3

>GPT-3 demonstrates that a huge volume of what's written is mostly bullshit

Have you never seen reddit or youtube comments?

But seriously this seems like a standard Pareto distribution, 20% of the writing provides 80% of the value and the rest is mostly drivel.

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: Philosophers on GPT-3

>I have a hunch it will work on 50% of people.

The number of people on Social Media that don't read past an article's headline is enormous, they are convinced by basic false headlines like "George Soros paying for mind control chips in Covid Vaccine" and it's astonishing. "I saw it on the internet so it must be true" used to be a joke when I was a kid and now its actually true for massive numbers of people.

devalgo | 5 years ago | on: Philosophers on GPT-3

>One consequence of GPT-3 is that I am now highly sceptical of the human provenance of any HN comment on an article about GPT-3

This likely isn't a bad thing. As more and more generative models come out it's likely that a majority of web based discourse will be bots. This is already a major issue on Twitter and being able to pick out real comments will probably be an important skill going forward.

page 1