Did the survey. Accidently pressed submit before calculating digit ratio :( Answered everything else though.
Huluk
Relationships between grant-maker and grantee or professor and student are violations of professional norms. We rightfully blame the grant-maker and professor for them and we don’t blame the grantee and student.
“Consent Isn’t Always Enough” is a misleading phrasing to make this point: It mixes the personal and professional level. We may want a norm on the professional level that certain relationships are not accepted. The norm that there should be consent in the relationship happens on the personal level – we don’t expect a manager to investigate consent in the relationships of their staff, nor is lack of consent mostly an internal disciplinary matter.
Survey taken, can’t wait to see the results :-)
[Survey Taken Thread]
By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.
Let’s make these comments a reply to this post. That way we continue the tradition, but keep the discussion a bit cleaner.
I think you are treating this too much like a normal trade situation; my impression is that the whole thing is mostly driven by people wanting to stick it to hedge funds. They “spent” some money on the good fun and have written off the amount.
Even after reading this comment it took me a while to find this option, so for anyone who similarly didn’t know about that option:
On the start page, below “Latest”, you can add a new filter. Then, click on that filter and adjust the numbers or entirely hide a category.
The likely result of public wealth information in third world countries is that you will get robbed or that relatives come to get a “loan” they never pay back. Any status signalling would be minuscule by comparison. So independently of whether this proposal would be a good idea in rich countries, your example doesn’t help to motivate it.
I found your point about your commute most interesting, in part because it is very different for me. I need movement in order to get active for the day, and if the commute provides this movement, it removes a possible failure mode – on days I do home office, I have to actively force myself to go outside for a run, and if I fail to do so and start working right away, I’ll predictably less productive.
EDIT: The commute is also one of the parts of the day which provides time for reflection on my everyday activities, and I find movement intellectually stimulating.
I’m currently applying for jobs while finishing up my Master’s degree, so I’m not technically in the group you are asking, but can hopefully still say something useful.
Background: I’ve been studying Computer Science with a natural language focus, both at a relatively unknown university in Eastern Germany and at University of Edinburgh. The latter is definitely top n in the field, although it does not have the same nimbus and does not offer as much of regular 1-on-1 teaching time with profs like Oxford and Cambridge do (you can get it if you ask, but it is not a default teaching mode). I can’t compare to the US because I haven’t been there yet.
Content comparison: I find that the courses at both universities is similar both according to content and quality. The focus is different of course, and workload is much higher in Edinburgh, probably because the degree program is only 1 year instead of 1.5 or 2 for roughly the same content. In both places I could get meetings with professors if I wanted to, although in Edinburgh there is additionally a lot of staff who checks up on us and reminds us about organisational things. Among students, there is a bigger share of really bright and enthusiastic people, and that is quite noticeable. The biggest difference here is that there is direct contact with the people who made major inventions and contributions to the field and are on top of things I actually care about. This is most important in a very narrow range of topics I want to go further. For the basics, it doesn’t really matter who explains them. I currently also get very good dissertation supervision, but I cannot compare that to my old university because I wrote my dissertation there during an internship and largely with supervision from the company’s research department.
Job applications: I feel like being in Edinburgh gives a significant boost to job applications. In Germany, profs were willing to write recommendations on request, but did not offer interesting company contacts on their own. There were partnerships between university and bigger companies, but this felt very cheesy and ineffective. Around here, I do get very cool company introductions and interviewers sometimes happen to have worked or studied here as well, which gives a good basis for conversation and might give a bonus, even if they try to avoid it consciously.
Conclusion: UK tuition fees at top-n universities (around £7k-25k/year) are low compared to US fees, so they are easier to justify and I think mine are worth it with regards to my future job. I would not say the same for knowledge gain per money, since German living costs are much lower and it does not have tuition fees. I could have done a two-year master in Germany for less money and could have had more relaxed studies with the same gain. I however wanted to have shorter, intensive studies, so the UK suited my preferences. Be aware however that Brexit causes trouble for British research, so this evaluation might totally change in 1 or 2 years.
If you want your terminal to greet you with rationality quotes, I created a new fortunes file: https://github.com/Huluk/rationality-fortunes Use with “unix fortune” for your operating system.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but your comment here gives me the impression that you are asking an awfully general question, but actually want the answer to a very concrete question: “Should I study X at a top uni abroad, any uni at home, or not at all, given that I’m good enough to choose myself but will have to make debts to study”. This would be a much easier question for us to answer, especially if you tell us what X is, whether you’d want to continue with a postgrad, and maybe what you goals are for the time after your studies. It’s perfectly ok not to know all of these yet, but some info would help.
Agreed with all of this, except the last sentence. Induction is superior, so let people learn of that and switch to it on their own time.
Also note that many cheap induction burners aren’t particularly great. They tend more towards making annoying noises, for one. You only get the full induction experience with the high quality equipment which puts you back a few k.
I also updated my fortune file, so that you can get random rationality quotes to your unix terminal. You can find it here.
I moved around quite a bit and every move was worth it from my perspective: Moves for university brought a lot of friendships I still maintain, moves for work brought 10x increases in savings, both kinds brought valuable experience. I now have a strong network from multiple communities which is … distributed all over Europe.
Over the last 3 years I’ve been trying to optimise toward the more local investments you talk about, to find a place where there already is community and where I can imagine staying long-term (success) and where I can contribute to the community and make investments in it (establish a group house + hub. Success for 1 year out of 2 year existence). Build a life with someone (failure).
I’m lucky that I am now for already 2 years in a place where I want to make new investments and where I can build on the investments I already made in other places. So I’m quite excited for what the next years bring :) I didn’t particularly like the place I grew up in and I feel that I’d be missing out if I had tried to make local investments there.
So I guess this is partly corroborating what you say, but with a very different perspective?
I like the term “obvious sugar”, and hereby commit to the same.
EDIT: On second thought, I’d like to allow for one slice of birthday cake per birthday, for social reasons.
Used the poll. Mostly check discussion in my feed reader (both smart phone and desktop), read easily digestible stuff right away, put off the harder stuff for later (and read about 1⁄3 of the things I intend for later consumption). Do vote, rarely comment.
How about #4, interrupt the conversation and ask for your definition (“If you use weird words you can at least save me the work of looking it up”).
There is a difference between “crunching probability flows, in order to output evidence apparently favoring that conclusion” and testing a hypothesis. Testing a hypothesis is an open-ended process. The tester may do it in order to find evidence in support of it, but that is not necessarily what they’ll get.
First, you have to find the path where fortune files are stored. In the man file of fortune, there is a chapter “FILES” in which you can find the default path for fortune files. Your path may be different, maybe you have to search for it. Put the files “rationality” and “rationality.dat” into this path and test using the command
fortune rationality
. If it doesn’t work, you can try to generate your own .dat file using the commandstrfile rationality
.I’d be interested to know whether this worked for you and what steps where necessary, since I didn’t try this with different fortune installations.
I have taken the survey.