Discord Discussions

Read our discussion about correlation studies (24 page PDF). They don't work, they're full of inductivism, and most social "science" is counter productive.

Read our discussion about religion, anti-depressants and more (55 page PDF). It includes criticism of the violent, leftist ideas of Sam Harris and how they are worse than Bernie.

Here's the link to join the Discord chatroom yourself. It's public.

Bonus Discussion: The value of Diversity and Four Day Work Weeks

Andy asked about his reddit topic, So how does Diversity make America strong?

curi: diversity of skills is a strength in economics.
curi: diversity of ideas/perspectives helps with brainstorming
curi: diversity of skin colors is ... a racist goal?
curi: diversity of cultures is somewhat related to intellectual diversity, and also it's good to see alternatives to one's cultural customs
curi: but that applies way more to chopsticks than to learning from other cultures how to more brutally control children or wage wars
curi: anime is good diversity, different way of using TV and art than the US does.
HeuristicWorld (Andy): What about creativity, do you think it boosts it?
curi: lots of these benefits are available via travel, book translations, the internet, intellectual collaboration with foreigners, global free trade, etc
curi: ppl don't rly know what they mean by "creativity". very vague
curi: and the assumption it comes in degrees is also not thought through
HeuristicWorld (Andy): I am thinking of "creative" problem solving. Like interesting solutions to engineering problems that is unique to the US that is not true of more homogenous cultures.
curi: if ppl were more rational, they could learn more from japanese approaches to certain problems. some ppl have tried but they could do a better job.
HeuristicWorld (Andy): Are you thinking of something specific or their overall approach to problem solving
curi: but ppl also often fail to learn much from English materials, so shrug
curi: there are lots of examples including toyota production system
curi: and that rent in tokyo is lower than in SF
HeuristicWorld (Andy): How did they manage that?
curi: by building homes
curi: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-japan-trains
curi: "A seemingly silly gesture is done for the sake of safety." It's very good that their culture teaches people to act properly instead of sacrificing safety to try to avoid looking silly.
curi: it's not just trains. there are related things for software engineering to prevent mistakes.
curi: on the other hand, salaryman culture sucks
curi: and their culture makes it hard to express disagreement/negativity/conflict to ppl. overly polite.
curi: and the asians cultures in general overrate hard work as against smart work.
curi: you see this a ton in education
HeuristicWorld (Andy): Oh that reminds me. How much do you know about these companies that are implementing 4 day workweeks that seem to have increased productivity. Do you think its a good idea?
curi: it depends on the industry
curi: it's a good idea in software
curi: knowledge workers in general can do around 3 hours of hard work per day, on avg.
curi: sustaining more than that leads to burnout
curi: and mistakes in software are expensive. bug fixing can take up a lot of time and effort.
curi: it's better to try seriously to write great code upfront than to have an unnecessarily high bug rate due to tired coders