unclesaamm's comments

This is conservative lobbying spam. The umbrella group producing this document is called the "National Academy of Scholars" (NAS), which publishes articles about "globalists" and is funded by conservative donors (see https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/annual...).

Annoyingly, the National Academy of Scholars was named in a way that collides in the namespace with the (actually reputable) National Academy of Sciences (publishers of PNAS).

It's a simulation (following the theme of the OP submission), so these outputs are assumed to be the same quality. The point is even if you assume the quality is the same, the structure of the faculty hiring network alone will drive faster/further diffusion from prestigious institutions.

While I think simulations and models are interesting, this model is just way too simplified to give any real insight. Here's an example of a leading scholar in the field -- Allie Morgan -- developing a simple model on this exact question! https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epj...

> Title: Prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of scientific ideas

> Abstract: The spread of ideas in the scientific community is often viewed as a competition, in which good ideas spread further because of greater intrinsic fitness, and publication venue and citation counts correlate with importance and impact. However, relatively little is known about how structural factors influence the spread of ideas, and specifically how where an idea originates might influence how it spreads. Here, we investigate the role of faculty hiring networks, which embody the set of researcher transitions from doctoral to faculty institutions, in shaping the spread of ideas in computer science, and the importance of where in the network an idea originates. We consider comprehensive data on the hiring events of 5032 faculty at all 205 Ph.D.-granting departments of computer science in the U.S. and Canada, and on the timing and titles of 200,476 associated publications. Analyzing five popular research topics, we show empirically that faculty hiring can and does facilitate the spread of ideas in science. Having established such a mechanism, we then analyze its potential consequences using epidemic models to simulate the generic spread of research ideas and quantify the impact of where an idea originates on its longterm diffusion across the network. We find that research from prestigious institutions spreads more quickly and completely than work of similar quality originating from less prestigious institutions. Our analyses establish the theoretical trade-offs between university prestige and the quality of ideas necessary for efficient circulation. Our results establish faculty hiring as an underlying mechanism that drives the persistent epistemic advantage observed for elite institutions, and provide a theoretical lower bound for the impact of structural inequality in shaping the spread of ideas in science.

This massive labor shift toward service work has been well underway across the US. See, eg, this excellent case study of how Pittsburgh's aging, shrinking cohort of unionized steel workers (with good health insurance) has been demographically offset by a growing (precarious, non-unionized) medical and care industry. Now the largest employer in Pittsburgh is the university medical center, and the largest sector is care workers.

https://shop.nplusonemag.com/products/the-next-shift-by-gabr...

This pattern isn't unique to Pittsburgh, of course, and has played out broadly across the US.

that's great, thanks for sharing! (though I'm not enough of a domain expert to know if it's accurate)

another solution to this would be if Science Advances were to require submissions to provide a "Significance Statement", like PNAS does, which would be essentially at the level of readability you provided.

Well, to answer one part of the question, the chief risk manager quit early last year and wasn't replaced until just over a month ago

It's worth keeping in mind that Stephen Wolfram likely didn't write this himself.

I know people who work at the company, and they sign agreements that any intellectual property (including mathematical proofs) they generate are owned by Stephen Wolfram. Anything Wolfram puts out, like blog posts, scientific articles, and books, are likely to be partly or wholly ghost-written.

I love this! Relatedly, here is a plug of an interactive unfolding of 4d polytopes into their 3d faces that I made recently: https://sam.zhang.fyi/html/unfolding/index.html

Not sure why you're downvoted, since what you're saying is true. See, eg, this article:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-supermanagerial-reic...

I'm guessing it's more likely, All You Need is Love, the Beatles song.

You literally threw it into a fire?

Crabby comment incoming:

I love Richard Feynman as much as the next person (minus his famous misogyny), but this post is basically contentless. It's literally a motivational poster. Like why not post an essay or video instead.

The article links to the study. The issue was more than certain people sat downwind of others indoors, rather than where the air came from. Let me know if you read a different conclusion from it.

One key result of this evidence is that we should take all the money going into deep cleaning, and spend it on higher quality masks for everyone. Also perhaps makeshift ventilation systems (being careful not to replicate that Hong Kong restaurant) or outdoor tents where feasible.

The opening analogy between a product roadmap and a literal map is thought provoking. But I think they're actually very different.

A product roadmap describes this direction and intent for a product that doesn't exist yet, like where you plan to go.

A map, on the other hand, is more of a summary or representation of _past_ knowledge. You create a map as you explore the territory to reflect what you've seen. And sure, you consult a map before setting out too.

I think this distinction is actually critical, because becoming too attached to a product roadmap as if it were a literal roadmap that can guide you to your destination is one of the main flaws of poor product management. The author mentions this a little in saying the product roadmap is a "living document", but I don't think it's emphasized enough. It's not just like a map that gets updated occasionally, instead it's more like this fabricated fantasy road trip plan (one that you have to undergo without an actual map).

The last paragraph surprised me even though it shouldn't have. It's shocking to have a clever scientific story suddenly grounded in the reality that this person is rapidly dying. In some sense he has donated his body to science even before he died.

This article talks about formatting and other superficial stylistic issues.

The main challenge of writing a technical post is deeper: who is your audience? And how much do you assume they already know?

The temptations are to take extremes: either you have to reexplain everything in the universe, or you assume you're talking to someone who already knows everything.

I've found this surprisingly hard to balance. In the end, though, I decided it's always better to err on the side of comprehensibility. This is true even for highly technical writing like scholarly articles.

One way that I've found works is to first write it out, stream of consciousness. Invariably this will be too technical. That will be obvious after waiting a day or two and revisiting it. Then build a bridge between where you are now and where the article is, with a more general introduction, and revise the body to flow with that new introduction. It's okay to push details to a supplement or appendix or footnote if necessary.

In response to people who are saying, "it's just because Chinese people eat weird food that the virus started in Wuhan," here's a much more thoughtful article about how the shape of the global markets contributed to the shape of this pandemic:

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/chinese-viru...

Sounds a lot like Factor. I wonder how it compares?

It's absolutely warranted and you did great. Everyone else on Hacker News is commenting as if perfect communication would have solved this issue. What they don't understand is the political reality of the situation - that in no universe of conversations, would Bill DeBlasio have admitted on recording that he was wrong or whatever.

In my experience, when politicians act defensively and cornered, they often go and make changes behind the scenes later. When you let them go without a scuffle they will view you as a non-threat. So great job, and cool project!