It wasn't always like this. There has been a steady rightwards drift these past years and now it has become much further to the right than both Scott and the majority of the blog's audience.
It was a containment thread to keep certain discussions from taking over the rest of the board. It was pinned so it would be more effective at doing that. However, it then stole most of the board's activity and/or attracted its own set of users.
I like /r/slatestarcodex, and I like the culture war thread.
But it's worth emphasizing Scott doesn't participate in that thread, and he doesn't necessarily like it either. In fact, from what I can tell he's not a huge fan of lots of the conversations that go on there, and the topics discussed.
If anyone were to judge him on comments, please only do it based on the curated comments on his website, where he deletes and bans people who are uncivil.
Ahh, ok. I recently came across his blog and the subreddit, and based on the huge activity in that thread I figured that was a prominent creation of his. Thanks for the clarification.
As I'm sure everyone has noticed, the culture war thread has essentially grown to devour all of /r/SlateStarCodex. Also, we talk about really weird stuff here. That's intended, and it's something I like about this community; however, given the weirdness, Scott Alexander no longer wants it on /r/SlateStarCodex. We're moving this thread to another subreddit, and after some internal discussion, we've realized that only a subset of our moderators want to be responsible for the new culture-war-specific subreddit.
So, basically an attempt at image clean-up. His audience created a regular discussion based on the terminology of his original content, but he's trying to become more popular to a broader audience. If people new to him were to search, he'd be able to put some distance, should this separation be effective. That's the gist of what I'm getting from reading the latest discussion.
But politics exists, much real stuff happens there, and also, it's great entertainment. It's also great training, if you don't succumb to bad thinking. It's better doing in company of people who try to be civil and use logic, even if it usually barely works.
Resolving this tension is part of Scott's writing from very early on. This is not just image clean-up, it's dealing with a difficult situation.
but he's trying to become more popular to a broader audience
Not so much that, but to avoid repercussions in his real life. There are topics being discussed that are real sacred cows, and even if his conclusions are "correct", sometimes one is considered evil just for daring to question the conventional values. (indeed, that's much of what the "culture war" thread is about)
Since his writing is just a hobby, he doesn't want fallout from that to impact his real professional career.
Yeah, understood. Personally, I commend him. I sure as hell wouldn't put my name to controversial topics (even if said discussion itself should, ideally, NOT be controversial). In today's social climate that takes some serious courage, and it's not really worth it unless you can be employed regardless of opinion. I'm guessing in his sphere that's not permitted, which is unsettling.
A more parsimonious explanation would be the comment section of any public forum on the internet quickly becomes a shit hole, and when that shit hole is in your name, but you don't participate, that's not a fun position to be in.
Probably not the popular opinion here but the way I see trump is he was campaigning hard against “illegal immigration”.
He didn’t explicitly say he’s against highly skilled immigration.
Trump may be an idiot but it seems people incharge of immigration have their head straight and H1Bs are in sore need of a revamp.
I hope the trend continues. America works because hard working and talented people want to come here and make beautiful things people want and build their dreams.
I thought I remember it being a campaign position, mainly stemming from it applying downward wage pressure on tech workers. It looks like it used to be but then he changed it.
> Donald Trump signaled a shift in his stance on visas for highly-skilled workers Thursday night, moving away from the position he took on his campaign website.
Thanks. I added a note at the skills section about the false positives. Really should have paid attention, but i guess i was just excited to show it off, first :(. I am on it fixing the regex.
You might want to consider performing your text analysis using something with a negex implementation; this would distinguish an instance of "remote" from "no remote" or "can't hire remote".
> There's no answers because the author gives thanks to a grad course in evidenced based teaching where he claims the only way to really know something and remember it is to figure it out for yourself. Math stackexchange can help too.
This is a cop out; of course to really know something and remember you have to figure it out for yourself. But answers allow you to check whether your work was right, and if not, allow you the opportunity to debug your work.
My best performance came in organic chemistry, where I looked for question banks (with answer keys) and solved problems extensively, perhaps bordering on obsessively. If I hadn't an indicator that my final result was wrong, I would have missed out on many learning opportunities, and objectively my performance would have been worse. In general, I have found this strategy to enable me to be an exceptional student.
If you don't benefit from an answer key, you're probably lazy and undisciplined. Alternatively, you have too much time on your hands, opting to rigorously confirm that each and every answer is correct.
In short, by not providing an answer key, you are denying the disciplined student the opportunity to efficiently learn.
In short, by not providing an answer key, you are denying the disciplined student the opportunity to efficiently learn.
I agree with you 100%. But let me add this: in most cases, if you're studying with a book that doesn't have an answer key, you can supplement that text with exercises taken from somewhere else. For example, lots of course websites around the 'net post previous years exams / homework with answers. There are also books like Schaum's 3,000 Solved Problems in Calculus[1], The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems[2], 3,000 Solved Problems in Linear Algebra[3], etc.
Also, with books that are used as textbooks, and that provide an answer key but only to instructors... if you aren't averse to violating copyright and using certain pirate websites, those "instructor only" answer keys can often be found.
He has extensive posts on his reasons, but it's also used for a course so only letting other professors have the answers to allow reuse of exercises is another reason. Those Art of Problem solving olympiad books don't have answers either with authors claiming same reasoning and in their defense I did learn a lot figuring it out myself. Personally I too like gratification of solving something then seeing the answers and finding a different and almost always more elegant/clear proof to compare to mine.
Not really. Facebook will put your account in a cycle of verification hell. They really don't seem to like accounts of users trying to be anonymous. Granted, maybe someone else will have better luck with that than I did. For me, they essentially disabled my account and re-enabled it on a weekly basis. I got too annoyed and stopped using it as a result.
L-theanine completely destroys my ability to sleep. I've tested a few times now. Dosage used was 100mg, taken early in the day. It's like I get stuck in super light sleep where I'm practically dreaming but awake.
Green tea does have caffeine, so I'm not sure if your side effects are related to L-theanine. I also have trouble sleeping as well when I have afternoon caffeine. I don't feel awake, but I just cannot sleep. It took a while for me to associate this with late caffeine.
What's your process like after that screening measure? Because to me, that's honestly trivial, and a lot nicer than dealing with an extended (8+ hours) homework problem as an introduction to a company's hiring process.
A ~4 hour on-site (or google hangout) technical interview and discussion. The first 30-45 minutes is usually us selling you on the company, followed by 2-3 hours of technical stuff. We do throw a few more coding questions at you (ones that are technically trivial, but made more difficult with interview jitters etc), but go beyond that and ask how would you design an API, how would you think about the technical requirements about business problem etc. After that, Q&A, and more selling you on the company.
That sounds like a nice process. I don't know anything about your company, but I'm thankful that you keep it sane and reasonable for prospective developers.
FizzBuzz? I find it hard to believe that FizzBuzz is being used as an actual screen, because realistically you'd have too many people passing.
If anything, the interviews I've been on have been four or five 45-minute whiteboard sessions, usually about data structures and algorithms or object oriented design.
Nowadays that also seems preceded by a homework assignment and a 3rd party coding quiz.
