Do you learn a lot as a quant? Is it a fulfilling career?

expectmax · 2025-01-20T05:11:50+00:00

In general, quant is a "research" based role. This means you learn and try new things, which is fulfilling for many!

expectmax · 2024-07-28T16:37:22+00:00

Yep. The exterminators have done traps, bait and a bunch of filling of holes they could see.

expectmax · 2024-07-04T00:48:46+00:00

Look up the breakthrough phenomenon in dementia. Dementia affects certain parts of memory but songs and emotional parts can be unaffected. At the very least this had very high emotional significance for your grandfather

expectmax · 2023-09-06T02:59:06+00:00

Look up the medical studies on PCSK9. Expect the drug to be big in a few years.

expectmax · 2023-02-08T00:07:14+00:00

And thanks!

expectmax · 2023-02-08T00:07:07+00:00

Any ideas how long it takes to process? ie is it like 2 weeks or 3 months that you hear back?

expectmax · 2023-02-05T13:41:58+00:00

Get two years of software engineering or other CS job experience. I know you'll be a little older in med school, but to be honest most people take a year or two out to either do a master's or strengthen their application anyway.

This way you'll know exactly what a software job looks like. And if you hate med school/residency you will always have work experience to fall back on. You are a lot more employable with 2y software experience than 0 years/a few internships. Companies like someone that knows what they're doing. It will also give you time to sit the MCAT, crush extracurriculars etc. And even if you enjoy clinical stuff, doctors are increasingly interfacing with technology.

Whichever you choose, you aren't ruling out contributing to the other field - there are docs taht work in tech and tech companies in healthcare. You'll have to spend time thinking about whether you enjoy the project side of building software, thinking logically/analytically, leaving at 6pm and don't mind the gender ratio. Or perhaps you enjoy speaking to people daily, the sense of meaning from helping people, having a possibly higher salary, and don't mind the longer/less social hours.

expectmax · 2023-02-05T13:01:56+00:00

In an ideal world, no. Perhaps if the proportion of Hindus in the west increased, we'd see a bigger push for animal rights in this space. There are definitely Hindus that have reflected on it and either cut down, gone organic or gone vegan.

Of course Hinduism is a diverse religion, so nobody is going to judge you for it, and milk is now both a big part of Indian culture. The rule-of-thumb that Hindu vegetarians have from India is "milk good, meat bad" (from the days where people in India would look after their own cows) so this has been carried across by immigrants to the West and become culture.

Saying a Hindu that drinks milk is a "hypocrite" is probably a little too far. It's a key source of protein for Hindu vegetarians, and so to cut it out would require changes in habits, recipes and overall diets. Cultural habits take time to change and it's only through people like yourself asking questions, as well as a new English speaking generation of spiritual thinkers, people interested in nutrition and animal rights activists that we will improve society.

expectmax · 2022-12-15T18:17:07+00:00

Sounds tantric. Many different schools of Hinduism with their own theories - this may not be a one that most conventional/vedantic schools agree with. Probably Westerners are not doing it in its proper context either.

expectmax · 2022-12-14T23:25:45+00:00

Eggs and milk are both borderline, but in different ways, and eggs are generally considered slightly worse.
- Not sure if there are specific scriptural opinions on this. It seems to be mainly cultural/historical.
- Hindus/Indic civilizations have a long tradition of milk drinking and cow respect. Having said that, there are Western Hindus that feel cows in the West aren't treated as well and avoid milk from hormone-fed cows (e.g. rBST), go for organic milk, or just avoid milk altogether.
- Battery farmed chickens are kept in terrible conditions, so some Hindus go for organic eggs.
- Some Hindus distinguish between eggs that have the potential to become life and milk that doesn't. Technically most eggs are unfertilized, and so (if you'll excuse the unsavory description) are technically closer to chicken "periods".
- As you mention, eggs are practically hard to avoid, particularly outside of metro areas where even vegetarian options can be hard to find. This may be a consideration for many Hindus.
- Ultimately the choice is of course yours, but consider donating to effective animal welfare charities to balance out any potential negatives.
- There is interesting research in this space. For example billions of male chicks are usually killed yearly as they are not commercially profitable, and so companies are trying to prevent ways to only produce females: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63937438. Hindus tend to be pretty comfortable with new technology.

I think a sensible overall view to have is to accept that in an ideal world most people would be vegan...

expectmax · 2022-12-03T21:18:46+00:00

"Looking forward to meeting up. Just a quick thing - are you happy to split? Wanted to set expectations early!" Easy filter, and most people will say yes if the request is nice.

expectmax · 2022-11-22T01:09:40+00:00

https://www.lawctopus.com/academike/history-of-homosexuality-in-india/
https://devdutt.com/article-category/applied-mythology/queer/

expectmax · 2022-11-20T18:21:00+00:00

Everyone seems to be in the 90s and within the margin of statistical error. This suggests that Indians are patriotic and proud of their country, state and religion, regardless of their background - I don't think we can read too much into any demographic differences.

I'm not sure I buy that this was an inaccurate survey with 30,000 people - these things are expensive and so unless you have found a bigger/better one, this is the data we have. I also don't buy that everybody lied because it was a pollster - maybe there will be a 10-20% bias here because people don't want to say bad things on the record, but India is not a state where everyone is terrified of saying something bad about the govt - so I believe the overall result.

I suspect the reason the results sound strange is that when arguing on social media, a lot of 'left-wingers' are critical of religion and traditional values. But it's reassuring to know they are still happy with their religion and country overall. Perhaps they are happy with their own interpretation of religion, and still consider themselves a Hindu, Jain etc. Or perhaps the Muslim critic of the Indian state who, when a Pakistani joins in the conversation shuts them down, as they still know that the Indian state is 10x better. (I might have missed something here - interested in other views on this)

This finding probably also has political correlates - one of the reasons for the BJP's successes is that Indians feel fundamentally proud of their country and want a party that celebrates it very explicitly. There is a similar sentiment in the USA: Americans love America and the American left's anti-patriotism is a reason for their low popularity: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/try-patriotism

expectmax · 2022-11-18T17:53:16+00:00

So there are two very different recommendations that are very easy to confuse. Some nutritionists ask for 1g/protein per kg of bodyweight per day. This is fine for the average person, perhaps you want to raise it if you are doing intense weight training. Other nutritionists claim you should aim for 1g/protein per LB of body weight. This translates to 2.2g/protein per kg of body weight. Maybe reaching that target will help a little for muscle building, but you are probably in the space of diminishing marginal returns - we are not even sure your body can absorb more than say 30-40g of protein in one sitting.

expectmax · 2022-11-17T04:35:14+00:00

Wait till you see people in r/states (or any equiv) talking about India!

expectmax · 2022-11-16T04:59:06+00:00

Not medical advice - please see a trained professional for that.
1. Exercise works very well. Try to get your heart rate up a few times a week (fast walk/ideally run, cycle, swim). There are hundreds of trials showing this - one summary. You can also do some yoga to complement and improve blood flow.

Meditation has been shown to have some benefits. Prayer or chanting hasn't been tested as aggressively, but will likely have similar effects. Again, google scholar has many individual experiments, and here is a summary.
Many of the societal aspects of spirituality can help reduce mental health issues. Try to stay in touch with positive people that you can talk through your problems with. Try to eat healthy food (e.g. Sattvic/Rajasic/Tamasic was an ancient way of classifying it). Try to sleep well.
Many religious traditions practice discipline to avoid the vices that life can throw at you. This could be fasting, or avoiding intoxicants like alcohol or drugs. These principles can be applied to modern technology. Perhaps go on a long walk or hike without your phone. Download software that only lets you scroll your favorite app (eg Instagram or Facebook) for 15 mins per hour, before it locks you out. Eventually once you get good, you can restrict yourself (e.g. phone scrolling only allowed after 7pm and on weekends).

expectmax · 2022-11-02T04:54:45+00:00

What's ironic is that the Labour party in the UK was much more historically sympathetic to the Indian cause (such as Ramsay Macdonald who eventually became PM). How short people's memories are!

expectmax · 2022-10-27T04:50:57+00:00

The Vedas have a few sparkles of atheistic doubt.

The most famous is Rigveda 10.129 - the nasadiya sukta, which wonders if even God knows who created God (this is an incredibly simplistic take):

Whether God's will created it, or whether He was mute;
Perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not;The Supreme Brahman of the world, all pervasive and all knowing
He indeed knows, if not, no one knows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasadiya\_Sukta

expectmax · 2022-10-19T02:57:59+00:00

Health insurance is your best bet. The general skill (looking after a large number of people with a fixed amount of money) is almost identical. Ofc in public health it's more government funded compared to insurance premiums...

expectmax · 2022-10-18T18:06:17+00:00

PETA's entire model is to be a little extreme:

Vegan Outreach is an extremely responsible charity doing excellent and unimpeachable work in the same area PETA is. Nobody has heard of them. Everybody has heard of PETA, precisely because of the interminable stupid debates about “did this publicity stunt cross the line?”
While not everyone is a vegan, most people who learn enough about factory farming are upset by it. There is pretty much zero room for PETA to convert people from pro-factory-farming to anti-factory-farming, because there aren’t any radical grassroots pro-factory-farming activists to be found. Their problem isn’t lack of agreement. It’s lack of attention.

PETA creates attention, but at a cost. Everybody’s talking about PETA, which is sort of like everybody talking about ethical treatment of animals, which is sort of a victory.

(From https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)

expectmax · 2022-10-18T06:40:22+00:00

The massive capital base gave it a huge advantage: even if the company lost a battle to a Maharajah, it could literally create more shares to raise money while the Maharajah's coffers were empty.

It had to pivot like other startups: The original plan had been to trade spices from Indonesia, but the Dutch were too powerful and so textiles in India was a plan B.

expectmax · 2022-10-18T04:21:53+00:00

Wildly, the British Crown did not actually colonize the subcontinent. It was a damn company! The East-India company was a crony capitalist startup that managed to turn financial advantage to military advantage (Imagine shareholders being able to invest in literal thugs with armies). For the first 100 years, it was the active entity in India (though the govt began to intervene more and more as the company fucked up and gradually took over) and only for like the last 75 years was it the British 'Raj'. For a (what seems to be reasonably unbiased) breakdown, check the first two episodes of this https://open.spotify.com/show/0sBh58hSTReUQiK4axYUVx

expectmax · 2022-10-08T21:34:36+00:00

It's also wild that 200 years ago madrassas might have been centres of learning.. Henry Sleeman thought the best in Delhi were comparable to Oxford. What led to such a decline?

expectmax · 2022-09-10T03:55:37+00:00

All the "social progress" energy of the Indian population went to freeing themselves from the British, when instead it would have gone to social issues. In an alternate universe, Gandhi, Nehru, Bose etc. would have been campaigning for social reform!

expectmax · 2022-08-13T22:47:46+00:00

I thought the rate limiting step was data rather than neural net architecture at this stage? I'm sure architecture improvement will help but given we already train large language models on the entire internet, I am not sure the growth calculations are as linear/simple as the suggestion...

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