they found it was invalid in the short term, for this particular study. the long term is still an open question. which is why they’re pointing that out.
saying “we thought this would happen, it didn’t, but maybe there’s just something to do with our study that meant we disnt see the result that confirms our hypothesis” is a perfectly valid conclusion.
That hit home. I'm afraid I was one of those lazy math undergrads who struggled with a few of the first year topics, didn't get help or put the hours in and never really recovered. I will maintain I think the teaching was very poor in places (lots of "just trust me" handwashing and "this is obvious so I'll leave it to you to complete" which for an 18 year old frankly sucks). A system that lets you get 30% in "analysis 1" and then just marches you straight into "analysis 2" next semester and expects you to just pull your socks up isn't much of a system to me. Honestly I'm afraid my time at university doing maths was miserable. I should have done something more applied like engineering or CS probably.
Someone once told me "If you like biology at school, do psychology at university. If you like chemistry, do biology. If you like physics, do chemistry. If you like maths, do physics and if you like philosophy, do maths". I should have listened.
I agree that the system is garbage. School ruins math -- but I just want to share that nothing stops you from revisiting math later as a fully actualized adult, without the bullshit time constraints and grade pressure. Math isn't well suited to time pressure -- in my view math is about spending lots of time with ideas and playing with them and taking risks and making dumb guesses, it's moonshot through and through. At its core is play, and time pressure doesn't serve anyone well.
Anyway, if you were interested in it, you can always revisit it, and even try taking a class again if you ever want to. There are lots of great books out there for self-learners, and lots of communities of folks learning together
> "If you like biology at school, do psychology at university. If you like chemistry, do biology. If you like physics, do chemistry. If you like maths, do physics and if you like philosophy, do maths"
This is good advice if the objective is to do well regarding grade results.
If you want to get down to the bottom of things, to understand everything and to solve fundamental questions of science, you might well want to invert the advice:
If you liked biology, study chemistry, for the processes of life are (electro-)chemical processes.
If you liked chemistry, study physics, for the processes of molecules and atoms, their formation and reactions, are physical processes.
The way I heard this phrased back in the day was, "Biology is really chemistry, chemistry is really physics, physics is really math." Never heard psychology or philosophy added to the chain.
I felt much the same way. I wish I had more creative energy at the weekend for these kinds of things... But then I remember that I actually have a much more creative job than most people and my creative energies are spent from 9-6 Monday to Friday (I work in movies). I've found MUCH more peace and pleasure in my "consumption hobbies" like watching tv, reading, playing linear story games that don't require me to be particularly creative and learned to stop being so hard myself for not having a hobby where I'm actively producing something like writing a book or making a game. Weirdly when I have a quiet period at work and am not so creative for 2-3 months I get the urge to pick up creative hobbies again. I've come to realise for myself that I have a measureable amount of bandwidth to create and a measureable amount of bandwidth to consume and they seem to be seesaw'd together.
I feel a new Dan Brown novel coming on! Probably is a coincidence given these countries were basically at war the whole time so getting agreement to even start a project like this is unlikely. Very interesting nonetheless.
I don't know much about fonts and typography but just want to acknowledge the huge amount of work that goes into putting together an article like this on something relatively obscure. Enjoyable read!
I also couldn't think of anything more embarrassing than using a friend this way. Could you imagine having a conversation along the lines of "hey can I use you as an insurance company, if I'll pay you $10 will you pay me $100 back if I'm Ill for a meeting?". Frankly I've never heard anything quite so ridiculous.
As a boss of quite a large team, I think it's ok to not have everyone be hyper productive 5 days a week and I don't want people cramming 5 days of work in to 4. I want a little slack and room to pivot for my team during the week. I need people to have a spare few hours in the week that they maybe feel is unproductive in order for them to be able to pick up a couple new things that crop up. I'm not able to schedule 40 perfect hours of tasks for people to start on from 9am Monday. Where are as a team Friday 3pm looks very different to where we'd be Thursday 8pm if everyone was nose to the grindstone the whole time.
Also if youre a business that is basically a team for hire to a client who works 5 days a week, what do you tell them when they come up with some valid but urgent request during "normal" business time and that key person isn't there because they've already done their 40 hours. "Sorry we'll have to pick that up next week" very often doesn't fly with them ("what do you mean that person only does 4 days a week, we need that thing done today" is not a conversation I want to have). I cannot always afford to hire more people to cover that unicorn 10x team member who wants to work 4 days.
What I don't get in all this is the at the beginning of the pandemic, HR, management etc made it very very clear that this was all a temporary situation and remote work would be allowed (enforced) for the short duration of the pandemic and then everybody would be expected to return to the office. I'm sure everyone was given a letter to that effect by HR. What is now going on with this "surprised Pikachu face" where everybody thinks that they can just stay remote for all time? It's ridiculous.
If you decided to sell your house or give up your rental in a good (perhaps expensive) location in the city near your place of work for a "better life" outside the city in new accommodation, well under the knowledge that after the pandemic offices might very well return to work and are now complaining about things like commute and quality of life is frankly laughable. You took a hell of a risk doing that and it's now not paying off.
The thing about being in an office is it's not about you, it's not about what you want and how your life is better being away from the office. It's about what you bring to everybody else, what you bring to a team of people more junior than yourself and what you can do to help other people. It's extremely hard to find new talent in a junior team working remotely - in fact I'd say it's almost impossible.
Pulling up the ladder behind you now that you've got yours and a comfortable life outside the office is frankly selfish. I can see that managers often get the blame here with comments like "they just need people to manage in the same building" I think that's very unfair because actually what they are trying to do is to manage a team of all skill levels and seniorities and by having a remote, or even semi remote, workforce that job is made much more difficult. Covid started about 3 years ago so anyone with less than 3 years of professional experience has probably never ever seen a real working office, just remember that.
It's worker fighting for more right. I don't see the problem there. I does not mean that it is "right", or good for the company, for the team or "morally good".
In an ideal world we should all work for "the greater good", but this is just a job. Trying to get more out of your labor is fine. Company always try to squeeze as much as possible out of their worker, why should it be wrong to do the same ? It is a business relationship.
