I think you've missed a step jumping straight to prison.
If you accept a lack of free will, the solution does not need to immediately jump there but rather to finding a way that is fair to all to prevent the bad behavior thing from affecting others negatively while not locking someone up in a cage. There are many lines in between and some penal systems have adapted, but the US is way far behind there.
The optimization is no longer about revenge / punishment but about altering the scenario of the world to make everyone work together better. Sometimes people need to be fully separated from society, but not often. I think we do have effective behavior altering treatments, but they just aren't drugs and take time. But it's not a straight line from "it takes time to help people and its unreliable" to "we're giving up on finding a way for society to work with the people who did not choose what they are".
Absolutely a UX failure here, one that it seems some doctors translate for patients while others are left in the dark on. From the way people are responding on here about the use of statistics in the article, it's clear that a big portion of the techo community I think is undervaluing that often UX is far more important than it is treated.
While the author may not be well versed or focusing on the stats side, you're missing the human side here I think.
> the tests are inaccurate, when in reality the tests are accurate
If the test make someone consider terminating a pregnancy or even considering it, that's a lot of pain. So for that human, the test is failing its purpose potentially, depending on the value calculation of terminating a viable pregnancy vs the severity of the issue if it comes to term.
For a human, accuracy as you defined it means little to nothing. Usefulness and helpfulness are far better metrics, and such a high false positive rate is clearly causing issues in respect to those, which is what the article is highlighting.
Usefulness and helpfulness are far better metrics, and such a high false positive rate is clearly causing issues in respect to those
How exactly do you plan on codifying usefulness and helpfulness?
A high false positive rate is not necessarily a bad thing and may instead be the catalyst for additional tests to confirm the first one.
The tests accuracy may actually be 100%, which is great because it avoids a child being born with a fatal genetic disease. Would you prefer a high false negative rate that misses these diseases instead?
Is it better to terminate 85 pregnancies which do not have a serious defect in order to catch 15 which do? At what point is it not better to terminate 100% of pregnancies?
Your first question and answer is against medical ethics. If you’re a physician you know that terminating pregnancies based on a non-specific but sensitive screening test is inappropriate (do no harm).
However, you are correct in your second statement - there are much more specific follow up tests which improve diagnostic accuracy.
Medical utilitarianism should never be so cruel and gruesome as to eliminate 85 healthy and wanted pregnancies in order to find and eliminate 15 genetic aberrations.
> At what point is it not better to terminate 100% of pregnancies?
Everyone should decide for themselves. Having seen the long term consequences I would rather err on the side of caution, even if it were difficult to become pregnant.
Such diseases are often incurable and significantly degrade the quality of life of not only the person to be born but the whole immediate family. At least in the US the there isn't enough social safety net or support too offset the crushing costs.
If that's the case, why not post some general guides based on experience? It seems like this excuse doesn't hold up if the job posters actually cared about transparency.
Example:
Job: Software Engineer
Description: Lorem ipsum
Range of 125K-300K based on relevant experience level
New Grad / 1YOE: 125-150K
2-5 YOE: 150K-200K
5+ YOE: 200K-300K
You can of course be as specific or vague, but these guides help inform people on both ends while not closing you off to those two disparate candidates.
What happens if someone looking for $450k really likes the company and can easily justify their ask. Is the comoany duty bound to now to refuse an offer that exceeds their stated range?
Then put that upper bound as unlimited and make a note that these are estimates. The theoretical candidate doesn't outweigh the value you provide to the vast majority of candidates if you do agree with the premise that it's good to provide the range.
If your upper bound is unlimited, what's the point of listing anything? Especially with a well known company like YC, it seems like they would have a solid lower bound so there's no need to list it.
Because there is an upper bound for most candidates, and there most certainly is a lower bound if the company means to hire fairly to employees. But as others pointed out, most companies do not have an unlimited upper bound. Additionally, companies do not want all senior level superstars, they almost always want the balance of levels. So be honest with those listings!
> Especially with a well known company like YC, it seems like they would have a solid lower bound so there's no need to list it.
That sounds like a great way to exploit the subset of candidates that don't know the unspoken rules of the valley. And given the variance of companies in YC, I don't think there is a known lower bound for every company.
Curious why this is downvoted, it seems like a valid question here of how to handle a situation that may arise. I like a lot of these rules but could see myself hitting these. What if I "can't make" 25% of Mondays. What about half? What's the general force behind the policy? That's a big part of the design here.
Your points weighs heavily on a lot of implicit parts of the value equation you left out.
1. That 20% number. What if it's 40%? 50%?
2. How easy/quick is it to replace the people you will lose who don't prefer this work style?
3. What percentage of your current workforce likes the environment as described? Maybe hiring off the street is 20%, but you've already selected for 80% through other selection factors.
Basically, at what point does the value gained from the in person work / setup overtake the loss of potential workforce? You're making an argument for why some people won't want to work there, but so long as the environment is not discriminating on things like race/gender/ability, a partial in person setup may actually be the right call for some teams/companies, without any "luring" needed.
I say all this as someone who primarily prefers to work at home now, but goes into the office once a week or so without any requirement to do so. I agree with OP's initial points a lot, though I think I would lean less towards requirements and more towards guides.
For 1 it's the Pareto distribution. I've seen it normal that 80% of the people do 20% of the work, and the top 20% do 80% of it. He's saying you'll keep the lower 80%.
I see that as a total misapplication then, as it actually assumes way worse - that 100% of the people would not like this work condition described, which is evidently false as OP has a company of people working in that. The question still remains though: what percentage of people would choose to stay / join this environment?
There are solutions here that aren't predicated on that decision, such as shutting down the dangerous avenue to all data equally (though that would break the Facebook ad machine).
The point that a lie in this context can be societally dangerous is still very relevant. Next up is the frequency / commonality of these dangerous lies.
In Stossel's case, one of his video's is being very closely taken to their implications, and being marked accordingly as "misleading" and "missing context". In the case of the BMJ, the factcheck title is fully inaccurate and itself is misleading. The Stossel case highlights this nuance, but in the end appears to be a partisan test of the legal waters. Facebook itself has spoken on that one and has defended it.
Of note though is this passage:
> In a previous response posted by Climate Feedback to Stossel’s charges about the fact-check rating on the “Government Fueled Fires” video, the organization wrote, “Stossel complains that we should not have rated his post using a claim review of a quote that does not appear in his video. This is a misunderstanding of how fact-checking partners operate on Facebook. Given that many pieces of content posted on Facebook can separately make the same claim, it is not necessary to create a separate claim review article for each post we rate. It is, of course, necessary that the claim we reviewed is representative of the claim in each post we rate, which is true in this case.”
It seems like in an effort for efficiency, articles are grouped together. I wonder if some article citing BMJ made the inaccuracies, and then the source got grouped into the same article group. It seems like that is a corner that cannot be cut here. To the surprise of no one, fact checking is hard and trying to group things together will cause problems. It seems to me that the critics are right to point out that fact checking will simply not scale while maintaining accuracy.
While there may be some good life wisdom dispensed in this thread, honestly I think it will all amount to armchair psychology. I think some individual therapy may go much further here. Have you been to one to specifically talk about this? If not, start there.
This could be a mindset thing, or it also could be a specific to a diagnosis that may be helpful to have to better understand yourself. A qualified therapist will be able to help you figure that out.
If you accept a lack of free will, the solution does not need to immediately jump there but rather to finding a way that is fair to all to prevent the bad behavior thing from affecting others negatively while not locking someone up in a cage. There are many lines in between and some penal systems have adapted, but the US is way far behind there.
The optimization is no longer about revenge / punishment but about altering the scenario of the world to make everyone work together better. Sometimes people need to be fully separated from society, but not often. I think we do have effective behavior altering treatments, but they just aren't drugs and take time. But it's not a straight line from "it takes time to help people and its unreliable" to "we're giving up on finding a way for society to work with the people who did not choose what they are".