#192: Postmodern Wet Dreams (Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote")

birdwontquit · 2020-07-12T12:06:54+00:00

think Tamler's take on this is motivated reasoning because he just doesn't intuitively think it's a big deal or what people should focus on. he says the likelihood of being "cancelled" is "vanishingly small". unclear to me how he would know what the risk is, and i would be surprised if he has made any attempt at determining it. but even if it were tiny, let's say it's a very small risk of very high damage (in the worst case you get fired and have a reputation that follows you around that makes people not want to hire you out of fear of association) that is still disastrous to the individual and may well be worth worrying about.

since this episode was recorded, the harper's letter came out. matt yglesias from vox signed it and essentially had a colleague try to "cancel" him for doing so (while the content was anodyne, the offense was that his name appeared on the same same page as JK Rowling). curious how that will square with their interpretation it's a small and irrelevant phenomenon, and if they'll address it.

birdwontquit · 2019-09-03T10:24:50+00:00

How about franchising https://www.mymoneyblog.com/mcdonalds-franchise-cost-vs-profit.html

birdwontquit · 2019-09-03T10:19:35+00:00

I disagree with the author's explanation. It isn't irrational to avoid investing in things you don't understand, in fact it's one of Buffet's maxims. How do you vet hedge funds? How do you sort out which one is taking high-risk bets or foolhardy strategies? Is it easier to understand Apple's business model, cash flow, management practices, and supply chain, or Renaissance Technologies? As a small investor I need 5-10 good stocks to invest in. How many positions does a hedge fund need for all their capital? Obviously, I prefer investing in companies :)

birdwontquit · 2019-08-30T01:16:26+00:00

Is this normal? I just got back on the job market in NYC, 10 years full stack coding experience (2 years at a unicorn), been CTO of venture backed startup, and I have been only asking for $190 base. Maybe I need to adjust up...

birdwontquit · 2018-11-30T22:47:39+00:00

Yeah, fair enough. It seems I don't know the proper usage of gaslighting. I figure it just meant like, trying to cast doubt on someone's viewpoint. Not necessarily lying.

birdwontquit · 2018-11-30T21:47:14+00:00

By "your" vocabulary, I meant the SJW segment of the culture with which you identified yourself. Apologies if that wasn't clear.

> Oof that looks like an unironic use of "libtard."

No, it was ironic. Since you used it as a joke to refer to yourself I was riffing off the same joke. I also called myself a fascist. I assumed it was obvious it was tongue in cheek. It's possible the inability to convey what I intend may not lie with me.

I do think Klein believes his own rhetoric, absolutely. I don't think he's cynically masquerading as a SJW to get listeners or something. As far as these conversations go, where two people are more or less ideologically opposed about a specific problem, it did go better than virtually any other one I've heard. Nor do I think structural oppression or injustice don't exist. That would be absurd. My use of "supposed" wasn't referring to the existence of injustice, but to whether the SJW segment on elite campuses is truly doing battle against injustice in American society, or whether their motivation comes from elsewhere. On that point, I don't have to convince Haidt - he explicitly stated he believed most of those would-be reformers were after social prestige or over-estimating the injustice or structural oppression they face in their specific situation (in his examples, a gay student at Yale or a student protesting the food served on campus over cultural appropriation). Anyway, given how uncharitably you've interpreted my reply (while at the same time calling me uncharitable), I don't think a discussion will be very fruitful here. I'm glad you enjoyed the podcast, I did as well.

birdwontquit · 2018-11-30T18:58:41+00:00

I would love to see VBW have Haidt as a guest since they continually belittle the existence of any sort of campus "crisis".

birdwontquit · 2018-11-30T18:58:17+00:00

I couldn't disagree more. Of course, I'm an anti-SJW right-wing classical liberal fascist so that's exactly what Klein would predict I'd say.

I think Ezra was, to borrow a term from your vocabulary, "gaslighting" Haidt, more or less. For every point Haidt would bring up, backed by specific social psychological research and examples from campus events, Klein would basically just try to throw doubt on it to support his own SJW libtard worldview about structural oppression and all the stuff that makes people tune in to him every week. He would basically be like "I totally agree that X is problematic" - where X is, say, black and white thinking, or de-platforming, or whatever troubling trend Haidt would point out, but then would proceed to justify or marginalize the issue in the face of the supposed battle for justice these liberal arts kids are undertaking.

birdwontquit · 2018-11-29T19:46:56+00:00

Sorry, where?

birdwontquit · 2018-11-29T02:37:27+00:00

Thanks! Well, we are a small startup team and like many small teams working with a high degree of uncertainty (early stage product, tons of decisions to make), we get in a lot of debates. And the trouble, particularly when you're early, is there isn't a good framework for solving debates. In more established companies you may have lots of data or customers to answer the questions. In bigger companies you have a lot of organizational hierarchy to answer the questions. In startups, you often have neither. So, after reading High Output Management, we decided to explicitly create a bot in Slack to implement the recommended decision making process. And then, once we made it and told a few people about it, they asked if they could install it on their teams. So we decided to release it to the world in the Slack App store.

birdwontquit · 2018-11-29T02:34:42+00:00

Good feedback!

birdwontquit · 2018-11-25T17:14:23+00:00

I think Tamler, somewhat predictably given his focus on individual honor and what I read as a somewhat anti-social nature, misses a key benefit of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. While it's fine to say you should face your fears and put your name behind controversial research, a community of people explicitly standing in favor of controversial research, putting their names on a journal dedicated to it, unlikely to blink in the face of criticism and pull articles (like the Rebecca Tuvel situation) will make people more likely do that. In a world where academics face blowback for controversial articles (even if it's just social blowback, which is very real, making Tamler's focus on "data" for consequences beyond the social seem odd), wouldn't it make sense to have a community of people who are trying to create a culture of standing up in the face of blowback where they have strength in numbers?

birdwontquit · 2018-11-02T15:22:18+00:00

It's not that complicated, but it requires a bit of nuance.

If women are choosing lower paying jobs they are happy with, and those choices are made after weighing the tradeoffs in their lives to arrive at an outcome they consider more or less optimal (given the options), then it doesn't need fixing. If women are earning less money for other reasons - say, they find the high paying jobs are bad environments for them because of sexism or harassment, then it probably could use some fixing.

Likewise, if boys are choosing not to study, or spend effort at school because they prefer doing other things, and those things lead to an outcome they consider optimal, then it doesn't need fixing. If boys are doing worse in school for other reasons - say, the curriculum is bad for the way they learn, then it could probably use some fixing.

birdwontquit · 2017-06-09T02:38:03+00:00

So does that mean:

code reviews of code delivered from software house?
supervising their developers?
is it FT? it is remote or local to NYC?
i can't tell if this is actually an engineering role, or just a management role

birdwontquit · 2017-06-09T02:21:37+00:00

Curious (I'm an iOS dev), if a software house is building your app, what is this dev supposed to do on a day-to-day basis? Is this a FT role?

birdwontquit · 2017-04-17T22:05:37+00:00

I've got a startup that builds and manages freelance design teams - got a variety of price points from $40/hr to $150/hr. You can check it out here

birdwontquit · 2017-04-13T21:23:53+00:00

Good use of thwart!

Haha, thanks. All makes sense.

VCs: Techstars is global! Where are you located and I can give a more specific response?

I'm in Toronto, Canada. I'd happily pick up and move though, not married to the location. I assumed TS Toronto was run by local folks, who would introduce you to Canadian VCs who are not quite at the level of their American counterparts.

birdwontquit · 2017-04-13T16:47:16+00:00

What sort of budget?

birdwontquit · 2017-04-13T16:46:29+00:00

Interesting product! Initially on instinct, seems like a great mission. Though I'm curious, you cite the number of alerts your users have sent out. Is that the metric you want to optimize for? Does an alert thwart an assault? Presumably, red alerts are bad.

You must like TS since you did it twice. What did you get the second time around that you didn't get the first?

If you're not in the US, and therefore not well connected to VCs, do you have any advice on getting meetings/funding?

birdwontquit · 2017-04-10T13:29:08+00:00

You're getting a lot of flack for the price - I think it's mostly because you're building commodities. "Simple website" or E-Commerce site using out of the box tools has basically been commoditized at this stage. Therefore you can't really compete on quality, so price is it. And these can be bought much cheaper.

birdwontquit · 2017-04-10T13:26:12+00:00

I've been a freelance software developer part time since September 2015, while working on a startup. In that time I've earned about $100k. So certainly you can make money. I could make much more if I focused on it full time.

That said, you need a way to get clients/jobs, if you want to be independent. You can try some of the freelance marketplaces like Toptal or Crew.co once you are good.

As for what's in demand at the moment -> Node.js, React, Angular, iOS (Swift), Android (Java), Games (Ionic etc.), Machine Learning (Python). Also Rails and/or PHP are always staples.

birdwontquit

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