skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Most evidence points to socialized factors, not biological ones."

I'm loathe to post in discussions like this because it's so useless, but points like this make me wonder if I'm just living on a different planet. Do you have children? Of different genders? Because literally every parent I know who has both boys and girls has the simple, non-ideologically-biased experience that boys and girls are vastly different, even if you treat them just the same. My youngest is a boy who was surrounded by pink fairy castles and butterfly coloring books until he was 2 or 2,5. And yet the moment he got his hands on a stick, he'd use it as a play weapon.

And from that observation that boys and girls are different, I wouldn't call it a stretch to assume that men and women might not be exactly the same, either. Why is this not blindingly obvious? I mean, how is saying otherwise not the very essence of "post truthiness"?
Not being able to come up with a way to do what you want does not mean you are correct to just do what you want anyway.
Well it's a comical image and if the context were someone dry humping someone else's leg then perhaps I might agree on the remedy.
I think the important point is that functional programming languages push you to immutability because it's a more sensible default. You can still write mutable code but the fact that code is always mutable in other languages can cause problems where none should exist.
I'm sorry about this, really hope you will get through it.

But this gets me thinking about a couple of bleedings I had a few months ago and totally dismissed. I will definitively see a doctor soon.
My apologies. Comment was low effort and not clear enough on the point it was making.

To substantiate that comment:

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/

What powers should define truth? Sensory / populist / ability to take life.
ADHD: A Lifelong Struggle
>Equally, if diverting more energy in to finding minority candidates is not lowering the bar for them then why would you need to divert more energy to find them?
reply

The point is to find the ones that can pass at a higher rate than you normally would. No bar is lowered, and your representation increases.
How many times do we have to people not to store ridiculous amounts of money on exchanges? It happens over and over again.
There's a demonstrable, statistical bias against hiring minorities that creates a higher false negative rate for them: https://hbr.org/2016/04/if-theres-only-one-woman-in-your-can...

Having an extra interview would seem a logical way of preventing the loss of qualified candidates, wouldn't it?
> He brought it to the Google Skeptics group for precisely that reason

That's not an off-line resource. That's a public mailing list reachable by any employee. It's not even remotely what I am suggesting.

> What point would that be?

"I believe our current hiring practices might be affecting certain candidates because A, B and C mechanism stop/hinder/disproportionally-favor X, Y, Z groups" No need for building an argument about biological differences between men and women, no reason to build an antagonistic recount of what you think the motivations are, no need to call your peers and higher ups "Leftist." State the facts, ask the question, move on.

Assuming he really cared about hiring practices (which is purportedly the reason he wrote the memo), that would've gotten everyone's attention and I can guarantee that nobody would've gotten fired.
I think this interview with 4 female engineers gave a lot of ways how that discussion could have had. Have you read it yet?
You can throw buzzwords designed to shut down discussion at me all you want, that's irrelevant. He claims his goal was to have a dialogue, the fact is that he chose a very poor way of doing that. Either his goals aren't what he claims or he misunderstood how to accomplish them.
> For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women’s work.

A few generations ago, programming was primarily a woman's job in the US.
If you browse the #perl6-toolchain logs[1] you'll see folk making steady progress toward practical interop of multiple versions of the P6 language (6.c, 6.d, etc.), P6 compilers (Rakudo 2017.07 etc.), and P6 modules on the one hand and hosting this stuff on CPAN on the other. But perhaps you know about that already.

I may be imagining things but, peering years into the future, it seems this versioning management aspect of the P6 toolchain might end up being the foundation of a new multiple lang/compiler/module version juggling Perl package manager that can be used with P5, P6, python etc. Does that make sense to you?

[1] https://irclog.perlgeek.de/perl6-toolchain
In theory that's true. In practice it really isn't.
Sure. I do that already, both formally and informally. Though I've probably been underestimating how career limiting that can be.

The Google firing was a really bad move if outreach programs are a good idea.
How do you see it playing out? Who would the forces be, and what the field of battle?
So, women and men are both competitive, but are competitive in different arenas and typically for different reasons.

I believe that's what Damore was saying in the first place.
WordPress is not WordPress.com
> The Milky Way in this context is the band of light visible on moonless nights, with no point sources.

Where does it say that in the article?
You misunderstood my answer. The only way you get to "I want this app to be no larger than 80Mb" is to make that goal and get to work. You cannot, for example, make your operating system boot faster from 30 seconds down to 3 seconds just by making things faster everywhere you can. You have to set the budget at three seconds and approach every problem from there. Atom is large because it has no size budget
Thanks--that's very useful to know. It is not cheap, but might not actually be that much more expensive than some of the in-person programs I was looking into, with in-state tuition, etc.
>Ah but come now, sexual attractiveness is a form of power!

Sure, in a sense. But as I said previously, your sexual attractiveness to a person is not something that you can use to threaten them or ruin their life. On the one hand, you have situations where an attractive woman tries to get what she wants by offering sex. On the other, you have situations where a powerful man threatens a woman who refuses his sexual advances. You only have to think of it from a first-person perspective. Would you rather be coerced into sex, or offered sex in return for a favor?

>to my British ears they sound almost comically absolutist.

I am also British.
Except no, he did not say google "had to lower the bar." If you read the memo, he says :

"Google has created several discriminatory practices: ...
Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate" [Mind you _lower the bar_ is a hyperlink, to a gdoc I don't have access to, so he's citing another document as evidence of this practice].

So he is in fact arguing a factual claim, that google has applied inconsistant standards in practice, as I suggested in my prior post.
iterators have been around for a long time and certainly aren't a functional construct. Lambdas are just syntactic sugar for functions in most cases.
Would you please not poison the discussion like this? Regardless of how correct your underlying points might be, it amounts to arson in a fire zone, and we ban accounts that do it.

Plenty of other users are able to express similar views to yours without violating the site guidelines. Please follow in their footsteps and post only comments that make the forum better, not worse.
I have finished the OMSCS program and in some ways I have mixed feelings about it. My background has been primarily in mathematics/statistics and I didn't come from a "tradition CS" educational background.

Did I learn a lot?

I learnt a ridiculous amount. For the time+dollar investment it is amazing. The program is definitely not easy either.

It has been amazing to learn the concepts in ML (Dr. Isbell) and AI (Dr Starner) courses and then a few weeks later think "I think I can actually use these concepts in my workplace".

Why the mixed feelings?

Not all courses had the same quality to it. From the top of my head, AI, ML were probably the best 2 courses. Other well ran courses I would add was computational photography, edutech, introduction to infosec (besides the rote learning...), however some of the other courses I had a relatively negative experience.

The degree does suck up a lot of time and I would say it is the real deal.

Knowing what I know now I can't say 100% that I will "re-do" OMSCS - to be fair on GaTech I'm not sure whether the challenges that I feel above are due to an online program and I personally would be more suited to an in-person program but the experience has definitely been better than Udacity's nanodegree and any MOOC which I have sat.

Overall I would say if you do it for the sake of learning and that alone - OMSCS is worth it. For any other reason please don't do it.
What you have posted is a claim. It needs a warrant.
If a rebuild didnt include setting timing and gaskets I would be very worried. It usually implies precision machining on the head, block, and valves, new pumps, rings, etc.
Replying here because I guess there's a limit.

> His reaching out to alt-right media and having a "Goolag" shirt on the very first interview suggests that he was kind of ready for it.

Which alt-right media did he reach out to? I've been paying pretty close attention and I saw him being interviewed by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, but they are not alt-right media. They are both classical conservatives.

> As anyone who's worked for Google (I have) will tell you, that's highly discouraged. You don't want to put Google or yourself into a weird legal position for posting publicly about this (for example, Google would have to track you down and make sure to archive all your internal emails moving forward for possible discovery, etc.)

Then all we have to go on are theories and the question: what's to be gained from him lying about this?
Doesn't that vary a lot depending on what kind of law you practice?

At least for some kinds, there is a lot of non-adversarial human interaction. For example, in patent litigation you are usually part of a team and spend a lot of time working closely with the other lawyers on your side, paralegals, outside experts, inventors, and other people involved with the patent on your side.
Sure, specifically race-related Affirmative Action programs may often (but not always) provide entrance to a minority who would on paper test lower than a non-minority. And this is intentional AND desirable. Consider it a long-term investment, or a direct attempt to break out of a feedback-loop. The historical shadow of racism is long, and even though the individual actors today (you, me) may not be explicitly racist, the trends are still there, hiding in our institutional practices, in our disparity of opportunity for the poor, and in our subconscious assessments of things that are different from us. Programs like Affirmative Action are conscious-level programs to battle subsconscious problems in our society. It's like making a chrome extension to block HN and Reddit during work hours because our subconscious habit of wanting to browse hurts our overall productivity. So we make a conscious-level decision to implement a practice that causes pain (deprivation of pleasure) in pursuit of a long-term goal (not being addicted to instant-internet-gratification and higher productivity). Affirmative Action will deprive some well qualified white students of positions at a single institution, (but not EVERY institution) and that may cause pain for an individual, but is beneficial for the society as a whole.

Diversity hiring practices may sometimes have a similar outcome, but I suspect the reality at most major employers is more often "these candidates are equivalent, give preference to the minority so our team can benefit from greater diversity." Because teams CAN have real tangible productivity/quality benefits from being diverse. It's not just black and white pure individual performance. By having a team with a broader set of backgrounds and experiences it may produce more thoughtful products/services for the diverse population of users who will ultimately consume them.

I won't ever argue that explicit programs like Affirmative Action and diversity hiring don't ever disadvantage any single individual - clearly, candidates get rejected. But I'm not going to join anyone's pity party over it either: there is real benefit for companies and society; in all cases, the party that gets rejected due to these policies is explicitly the party that statistically has the most opportunity in the ecosystem at large.
Don't surrender, Scott.
The minefield is not the hiring process. The minefield is the discussion of gender in hiring.
Incidentally, Musk's take: "The whole road system is meant to be navigated with passive optical or cameras and so once you solve camera vision then autonomy is solved if you don't solve vision it's not solved so that that's why our focus is so heavily on having a vision neural net that's very effective for road conditions." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv7qL1mcxcw&feature=youtu.be...
Hmm, Computer Science is most definetly a science (which shares quite a bit with maths as expected). A lot of algorithms and data structures you use under the hood when doing engineering were born as a paper in academic CS sphere.

Of course, most CS graduates don't do science, but actual engineering work. That doesn't make CS any less of a science though, it just means that most people employed in private companies don't do it.
With much sensitivity to the physical and emotional turmoil the author must be experiencing right now, I disagree with his advice:

> Stop just assuming you have a full lifetime to do whatever it is you dream of doing.

Rare and catastrophic events like this that can severely shorten your life are ones you should not plan for. If they occur, that's very unfortunate, and maybe you'll still have a contingency plan that can rearrange your plans to fit the remainder of your life, but he was still right to have arranged his life from the start to maximize his expected (in the statistical sense) impact:

> Before this diagnosis I’d been thinking of my 1st 35 years — aside from being a ton of fun and travel — as preparation. I felt like I was building a platform (savings, networks, skills, experience) that I could then use in my second act to make a real contribution, to “make my mark”

"Most of the time", he would have been right to use the early part of his life to make long-term investments in his development. It's just that this time it turned out to be the wrong choice.
The article points out the high degree of selection bias with schools and how that can make it very difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons between schools.

I was just trying to mention ways to compare schools that won't be affected by the selection bias described in the article.
Whether outcomes and desires follow from prior events isn't relevant. The fact is that outcomes follow from my desire that it be so, regardless of the source of that desire. So if you can muster the desire, there are good causal reasons to believe you can achieve that desire.

The true nature of free will and its connection to determinism simply isn't relevant to whether desires are causally connected to outcomes, and so whether this belief is well founded.

Edit: the only way out of this is to be a fatalist, whereby outcomes will always happen no matter how hard you struggle against them, that they are independent of our desires. Few people subscribe to such a view though, and if you happen to, then I can only say I'm sorry.
r/QuantumComputing[1] is a great place if you want to learn more. We read and discuss one Quantum Computing paper a week.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/
What is multi-culti?
I think the most empathetic comment on the memo that I read was that it would have been to everyone's benefit if Damore had showed it to several more experienced engineers and incorporated suggestions. No matter who you are, you can use an editor.
If the supply of qualified female candidates ready to be hired now is thought to be restricted (so that the bar must be lowered), that does not imply the same thought about the capabilities of women. The problem with diversity could be thought to be in the talent pipeline: young girls wanting to be programmers, gaining interest and experience in high school, going to college to study computer science, staying the field to reach higher levels, and so on.

In fact, we find that the field was way more diverse before the 1990s, and the talent pipeline for female programmers only started choking in the late 80s (for reasons we could argue, but one popular theory involves boy-oriented PCs and video games).
A quantum process is a random process, but isn't it still an open philosophical question as to whether the "random process" we observe is truly random, or is instead governed by deterministic hidden state?
I think Sadedin does a great job with the biology, and is a little weaker on the morality. The one point where he really goes wrong is here:

>paradoxically insists that authoritarianism be treated as a valid moral dimension, whilst firmly rejecting any diversity-motivated strategy that might remotely approach it.

Even if we admit this is wrong he still does a good job, particularly on points #1, #3, #4, and yes, #8. I think it's important to call out the subtle racism whereby Damore attacks gender and racial diversity programs without actually providing any justification on the racial element. But I think this point (#9) is clearly wrong because if we accept it on its face it means that we cannot tolerate discussing any system of morality (in this case authoritarianism) which we do not want to see implemented, which is clearly wrong. I also cannot agree here:

>But in general, Google has done magnificently well without resorting to the binding [conservative] values — and let’s hope it continues to, because an authoritarian, fanatical and puritanical Google that dehumanizes outsiders would be very, very bad news.

First of all I don't think Google has ever truly avoided the binding values -- in fact the identity "Googler" has been more intentionally constructed, I think, than "Microsofter", "Facebooker", "Appler", etc -- and second I don't think that implementing them is necessarily "fanatical and puritanical", any more than implementing compassion is necessarily inviting to louts.
Given there is no further context in the messages released I humbly submit that this "explanation" provided by the unbiased source at Uber is full and utter bullshit

Like, they are standing there taping other people running red lights? And Kalanick cares how, exactly?

No, this is them taping their own cars running red lights. Which is a very likely scenario since they are 1) testing on a small subset of streets and 2) if it makes the mistake once, bet on a computer to make it again.
I Was in Tech. These Were Not My People
Thank you sir, that response made my day.

For context, drownproofing was a course once upon a time at Georgia Tech which is now more famously taught in the Navy SEALS. It teaches you not so much how to swim but how to bob just below the surface without drowning or expending too much energy. The "final exam" was having your ankles and wrists bound and being dropped in the pool.

There's a startup metaphor in there somewhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drownproofing
I went to five high schools growing up and this is not what I experienced. I personally and through others found the exact opposite to be true. Yes you can send students(whether bad or good) to both bad both public and private schools but sending bad students to good public or private schools doesn't make them a good student.
Fuck. For what seems like years I occasionally have some bright red blood on the TP and occasionally the toilet is red. I don't know why I never thought to go to a doctor. I figured it was from hemorrhoids or something. Generally though, I don't get sick, unless of course I have been and just ignored it.

The last several years I was working to develop a workable "cure" for bipolar (Which it seems I have, but which took a lot of research time and emotional energy.) Perhaps I ignored these things because I couldn't stand the idea of something more.

If there is anything the journey to healing from so called "Bipolar" taught me it was that I have a robust nervous system and can look this stuff head on if I have to.

I'll go get checked out this week if not tomorrow. Thanks for posting this.

Oh, also. I have a friend who recovered from multiple bouts of cancer by eventually for going western medicine and doing vegan diet and reversed everything.

I'd also suggest looking into some sort of psychedelic therapy, perhaps ayahuasca -- the emotional system is the immune system and it really wouldn't hurt. Also, may help with the psychological experience you are having now.

Grateful that you are here and reporting back from the front lines.
Law could be nurturing. There must be thousands of people that need legal help but can't afford it, or aren't in a position to seek it out even if they need it eg victim of abuse or assault.

In which case the attorney may double as a councillor of sorts.

This dual role is common in lots of jobs though. Maybe defending people is more appealing than maybe mentoring junior devs.

Maybe accounting is due to stability? In western countries you always need an accountant. You could probably make an argument about women not being risk takers.

Your last point is why statistics in developing countries are always brought up. At least one thing is clear, we can change the environment to get more women into STEM.
The sad part about all this is that by presenting and alternative narrative to his own in good light with a question as to how the facts presented actually play out, we might have had a good discussion.

For example, even if it's true that on average women do worse in general in technical or engineering fields, that doesn't necessarily mean that the women in those fields currently are worse on average. There are a few possible reasons why they may be better than the average men in those fields.

Firstly, if we accept that women have different levels of aptitude in certain skill sets, there's no reason to assume they have the same variability. It's entirely possible that women on average are worse in certain skills, but that they have more exceptional outliers.

Secondly, even if there is not more variability in the female population for the skills in question, it's entirely possible that cultural and social pressure has resulted in those that choose careers on those skills having higher than average abilities in them. For example, if my family has a legacy of being fairly clumsy and uncoordinated, but my brother is a pro athlete, what's more likely, that he's a crappy athlete, or that perhaps the criticisms that apply well to my family do not apply accurately to him, for whatever reason?

Providing an olive branch can make all the difference in a discussion like this, and the fact that neither explanation put forth here is contradictory with each other or the premise that perhaps a 50/50 gender split isn't necessarily ideal makes this particularly lamentable, since we might have been able to have a good discussion about gender differences while minimizing the impact it has on individual members of that gender. Of both sides (there's plenty of fields where men face an uphill battle too).