'As many as', suggests there might have been one particular case where that happened, probably due to a complex situation, (small company, pandemic, company going out of business, lack of strong oversight, policies on returning equipment not set in place at the time of layoffs, ect).
Using that one particular statistic to make this point seems like an obvious use of bad statistics. The average or median is probably much more normal, and probably a huge number of computers worth a good chunk of money, but it doesn't sound that eyecatching so they choose to go with this particular number.
I'm not sure if there's any history of financial association, but I do know that all of these people generally travel in the same circles.
When I went to college in Berkeley I went to a couple rationalism adjacent events in the city and saw there was a huge overlap of that EA/Rationalism/Silicon Valley startups people. Never saw Sam Altman at those, but met a couple YC founders and other people who knew him and spoke generally well of him.
This is a quite uncharitable view of things. EA utilitiarians aren't spending their life on optimizing numbers, they're trying to use numbers to guide decisions on how to better impact life.
People can follow a value systems and still understand that other value systems exist.
The EA view of things is pretty simple to understand. Given the premise of limited resources, and a belief that all lives are worth the same, how can you best improve human livelihood?
Different people approach giving back to society in different ways. The EA way to approach the above is to crunch numbers and find what they think is the place where their limited resources can have have the largest impact.
My best friend's family does their part by joining their church to volunteer at food kitchens in poorer neighborhoods and hosting fundraisers for various causes throughout the year.
A Vietnamese coworker of mine used to give back by donating to a charity that gave scholarship opportunities to high achieving low income students in Vietnam.
It's not that complex to understand that different people have different value systems and how they view their tribe, people and the world.
And yes I agree that lots of people find people who hold differing views incomprehensible, but that's also normal aspect of humanity and not unique to those in EA.
From political differences, to philosophical differences, to religious differences, to any topic, many people have a hard time comprehending the worldview of others.
You can even just take the perspective from this article. There are a whole swath of people I've known that could not comprehend the idea that someone would be willing to give their kidney to a total stranger. They might understand if its someone the person knows, but a total stranger? Some might say that's insane and irrational behavior.
Lots of people can't see past their own perspectives on things, but I think it's uncharitable to suggest that EA is not just like any other group with some portion of people like that.
People complaining about the fairness about legacies and donor children miss the point that these people are half the reasons people care about these top private schools.
If you want a meritocratic institution that is actually reasonably priced and provide great educations, then that's what a state school is for. Or like the few private institutions that are actually meritocratic (MIT, caltech)
Elite schools are for the children of elites who will inherit some amount of that power (political, wealth, ect) and for a small cream of normal people who have the iq, eq and luck to be chosen. The goal is to let these people mix. That way in 20 years after graduation when a brilliant mathematician has discovers a powerful algorithm that he has an inkling that it could apply to the stock market, he can phone up a college roommate that had an extremely wealthy dad in finance. The rich heir roommate can join and fund the venture that might billions on the stock market. Or the fact that an official in the state department went to college with the then daughter of South Africa's president, chances are that daughter still is influential. They can talk and maybe broker some aspect of foreign policy. They are finishing schools for the elite. Whether we like it or not, society's next generation of elite includes the most capable children of the current elite. Evn if those children are less capable than the most capable of the general populace, they stand to inherit quite a bit and they will have an outsized impact on the country and world. Their parent's and ancestors influence is important in their acceptance process because it's important in real life.
There is no real solution to this. There's a reason that despite America growing in pop insanely, foreign applications increasing exponentially, billions being donated to them and everyone going to college, these elite institutions have barely changed class sizes.
The exclusivity and mixing of the different types of people is a feature of these places. If you somehow get these top institutions to be more meritocraric like MIT or Caltech or increase overall student body size like ASU all that will happen is that individuals with power, wealth and influence will simply slowly coordinate to send their kids to different schools and soon enough those schools will face this scrutiny again.
Now I can understand that it is extremely unfair that when all our Supreme Court justices, significant numbers of national politicians, power brokers and many individuals with outsized influence come from a few institutions. If you are one of the many intelligent, hardworking and capable individuals who don't get in when others who are probably just as good as you might, it is extremely annoying. Their entire trajectory of life is changed because of luck that you didn't get. But sometime life is like that. College does not exist in a vacuum and just like most things in life, influence and wealth are powerful.
Those with power tend to want their descendants to have some of that at least and they will do what they can to perpetute that.
I want to say I'm not saying that this is perfect or even great. I'm just saying the way humans work and the way incentive structures are setup, this is how it is. To not mention this is to be ignorant. If you want to improve the status quo you need to acknowledge the reality of the situation and plan around this.
I did not attend one of these institutions for the record.
I don't know if I'd subscribe to the above person's ideas, but the simple business approach would probably work right?
Treat it like any form of behavior that creates a hostile work environment and thereby lowers overall workplace productivity. Businesses are incentivized to keep things running in the most productive method possible.
Discrimination costs your business in lowering employee productivity and other affects like possibly losing talent or opportunities. Warning discriminating employees that their behavior could cost them their job or simply firing them depending on the severity of the situation seems like a simple enough solution?
I think it's more mocking the oversimplification of complex problems.
That though caste discrimination causes significant harm and problems in the Indian and Indian diaspora communities, not every, "bad thing", stem from caste discrimination in specific.
The idea that sexism and other terrible things can be prevelant issues that need to be addressed better but they are not necessarily related to caste.
I think one thing to keep in mind is that Wyclef famously used his celebrity to raise money for Haiti after the earthquake and it was shown that much, if not most, of the money raised was used by Wyclef and his family/friends for personal spending.
That behavior suggests that Wyclef might have continued the same corruption that other Haitian politicians engaged in and maybe taken it a step further by leveraging his celebrity to also pocket money brought in as outside investment.
Again, maybe he couldn't be worse since other Haitian politicians would have and did engage in similar corruption, but it'd be a stretch to say that it's anything we should consider as "what if" that would had the real potential for positive change in the country.
OP is probably talking about the legality of American hospitals using this software in an official capacity like some Chinese hospitals seem to be doing.
I'm completely unfamiliar, but it wouldn't surprise me if for diagnosing? software like this to be used in an official medical capacity in America it would need to go through some sort of particular vetting process because if it isn't it might leave hospitals who use it open to lawsuits.
Do you genuinely believe that laws that try to separate criticize versus insult can work?
I can't see anything other than laws like that being abused by politicians and government officials to quell speech and create a chilling effect amongst the populace.
Yeah, and for a father to take paternity leave suggests the father's job and family's financial situation are doing reasonably well. Financial stability plays a huge factor in keeping couples together.
Property tax is generally determined by the average price of housing in an area. California's prop 13 allowed people to lock in their property tax based on when they bought it. Its been beneficial for retirees and older folks in California who bought their houses decades ago and if forced to pay the taxes based on current valuation would be forced to sell their house and move.
Its received a lot of criticism from people who point out that it's inherently unfair and how that the tax level stays the same if the owner dies and passes the house on to their kids. It also receives a lot of criticism because it also applies to businesses. One particularly egregious example is a country club in the middlebof LA that exists on prime developmental land and normally would be paying huge taxes pays nominal fees and is only available to the extremely wealthy that can afford to join it.
Prop 13 did get some reform last November in regards to inheritance and flexibility for homeowners.
Using that one particular statistic to make this point seems like an obvious use of bad statistics. The average or median is probably much more normal, and probably a huge number of computers worth a good chunk of money, but it doesn't sound that eyecatching so they choose to go with this particular number.