Unlike news companies, commentators do not gain monetary value from sensationalism.
Authors of articles are generally more informed than their pieces suggest, but their editors step in and make the story "pop" for readers in order to generate clicks. This often involves removing nuance. I believe that most major news organizations make an honest effort to be factual, but there's a lot of room within the facts to be misleading.
A commentator that is an expert in the field is not constrained by an editor, and can in a few paragraphs give a more realistic and accurate assessment of the phenomenon.
When I read articles about things in which I'm not knowledgeable, I don't trust the conclusions until I see high quality comments(or tweets) that confirm the thesis of the article.
The modern Chinese psyche has been sculpted in large part due to the Cultural Revolution.
People who have grown up in comfort do not fully comprehend the effect of widespread hunger on a large population. Natural selection rewarded those that put their families above everything. The families that did not died. Parents that did not do everything in their power to feed their children watched them starve to death in their hands.
Many things about modern China can be directly linked to this shared national pain.
The absolute, obsessive drive of Chinese parents to have their children study and reach a higher station of life is a direct result of the culture of hustle instilled by their parents and grandparents. Devotion to families, incredible work ethic, creativity and innovation can all be traced back to the skills necessary to survive the Cultural Revolution.
However, many of the problems in modern China can be linked to this phenomenon. Bribery, open piracy, corruption are common in every walk of Chinese life. Chinese people put themselves, and their families, first and they've never had a compelling argument against it. People in the West believe in their institutions in a way that doesn't exist in China.
But, time will change this. There is clear precedent in the West that each successive generation that grows up outside of poverty will be less and less cutthroat compared to the generation prior.
The letter is a massive mistake. The most ardent feminists that I know aren't willing to defend it. It's absolutely and clearly hypocritical, and maps directly into every shitty, awful defense of a male sexual harasser, just with the pronouns switched. It's a shocking lapse of judgement that the co-signees were not able to understand that.
I find it frustrating that this letter gives cover to the kneejerk victim blaming defenses over the last year of male sexual harassers. It's a straightforward argument for those writers to point out that a group of world renown feminists, who have studied power dynamics in-depth, fell into the exact same trap. This is exactly the wrong conclusion to reach, and stalls the momentum of a movement that was doing genuine good. I disagree with the trend of dismissing due process in the #MeToo movement, but it is absolutely undeniable that it has brought justice to victims of horrible abuse, in a way that simply would not have been possible 2 or 3 years ago, and should be applauded for that.
From a purely Orwellian standpoint, I think the Russian model of government/media interaction is more effective.
There is "freedom of press" in Russia, and there are opposition media groups, but they are toothless. Journalists that publish scoops on high-level Russian government figure are in serious danger. Therefore, the opposition media produces watered down, safer takes. This allows state media to refute the opposition points step by step, so that the next time the argument is made, the viewer feels that it has already been addressed.
Contrast this with media blackouts like in North Korea. While NK's propaganda is extremely effective at training their population not to believe foreign accounts, they have a serious problem when it comes to South Korean movies/TV/music. NK citizens are fed the narrative about dire conditions in SK their entire lives. When they begin watching smuggled SK media, they realize that SK is in a much better economic place than them. This results in a serious erosion of trust towards the NK government, which is evident in the number of NK refugees who point at SK entertainment as being the impetus for their escape. This seems ridiculous on the face of it, but makes sense in light of how it results in a breakdown of belief towards the NK government.
If, instead, the NK government accurately portrayed what life looks like in SK, but provided reasons and justifications for the difference, they would not have this problem. There would not be the cold water shock when citizens saw a SK movie for the first time and realized that their world was a lie.
You also see this type of thing with $POLITICAL_PARTY's big social media personalities. They take a watered-down, strawman version of the other side's argument and refute it. When their followers see the real version of the argument elsewhere, they are primed to disregard it, and they roll their eyes and laugh and move on. Whereas, if they saw the argument and it was novel to them, they would be much more inclined to read and consider it on merit.
I've worked with Chinese students who are studying abroad who slowly begin to lose belief in their government when living outside of China. It is not the hardcore, biting Western anti-Chinese propaganda that makes them lose their trust, but the day-to-day life of living in a place where there is substantially less corruption, genuine freedom of the press, and information is much more open.
Knowledge tests that introduce time pressure become lossy. An employer can test performance under pressure and extrapolate that against historical data, but they cannot do it in the reverse order as the information is lost.
> By extending that time you can no longer make the difference between 2 people with good knowledge but different working under pressure skills. That's the difference between good and best.
This is true, but if two students have the same score from elongated tests and one does not test well under pressure, it's straightforward to understand that one of the students would have performed better on a time pressure exam. However, consider:
Student A achieves 92% on a 1.75 hour exam but would have achieved 90% on a 1.5 hour exam. Student B achieves 94% on a 1.75 hour exam but would have achieved 88% on a 1.5 hour exam.
In a 1.5 hour exam, the clear conclusion is that student A is the better student. But is student A truly the better student in this scenario? The exam length is a rough estimate made by a university, and it seems like an arbitrary line to draw.
Allowing every student to have enough time to show the breadth of their knowledge on the subject material is not "helping" women. The same principle is applied to both men and women. It is an attempt to provide a level playing field and work towards meritocracy.[1]
Consider an exam on a technical subject that contains questions that are difficult to parse in English. Non-native English speakers have trouble parsing the questions which results in lower test scores. If I suggest that we simplify the language in order to accurately gauge the students knowledge of the subject, you may suggest that this is discrimination against native English speakers. This is undoubtedly true in the context, but it is an attempt to move towards a level playing field which tests knowledge of the subject, which is the entire point of the exercise. You can test for English proficiency separately, that is not the point of the exam.
[1] Contrast this with link 2 in the GP which is straightforward discrimination against men and was roundly rejected for that reason.
You believe that a student that derives a proof from scratch is less knowledgeable than a student that rote memorizes it out of a textbook?
My argument comes from the perspective of the real world. It is, in effect, the same type of argument that drives the "interview questions on a whiteboard" discussion -- which qualities are actually important in an employee? As someone involved with hiring for a company that consistently produces high quality, critical code used in important systems, my experience is that "working under pressure" is pretty far down the list of important qualities.
By cutting exams short, we are losing information about the student's knowledge in return for information about how well students work under pressure.
As an employer, "working under pressure" is not very high on my list of
considerations. I would much rather have a complete picture of the candidate's ability to learn and retain information. Well-designed systems take months and months to build, I would prefer information about the candidate's general aptitude than their ability to work in crunch time.
If I was looking for employees for a job in which "working under pressure" was a central component, I would rather test for that in the interview process and have their university scores be uncompromised by pressure.
Yes, #1 "is different" than the OP. It would only be equivalent if women were allowed more time than men to complete the exam.*
#2 is a completely misleading headline. It ... never happened. An article in which the 2nd paragraph contradicts the headline isn't written in good faith.
[*] I would also argue that extending exams so that each student has a reasonable amount of time to finish is not a bad practice. A student that gives a correct answer in the extra 15 minutes is no less knowledgeable than a student that gives the correct answer in the original allocated time. We are selecting for breadth and depth of knowledge, not speed of recitation or ability to perform under pressure. In a CS exam, you either know the answer or you do not. Extra time is not going to allow you to falsify your level of knowledge. It will, however, give slower workers the ability to fully complete the exam.
Students that work quickly but are less knowledgeable than their peers are the only ones that would be penalized by this change. Those students have inflated scores relative to their knowledge, therefore this penalization should be encouraged. In an untimed test, the most knowledgeable student will always get the highest test score, therefore knowledgeable students should not be opposed to increasing test times, they should encourage them.
> Isn't it also naive to think China and Russia weren't fully aware of the NSA's capabilities?
The latest Mueller indictment suggests no.
I believe that the NSA's domestic surveillance programs were an egregious mistake. However, I do not think that "awful countries" implemented domestic surveillance programs because they read the PRISM documents. Nor does it explain why Snowden leaked details of activities that were not illegal and fully within the mandate of the NSA.
I would agree with you if Snowden narrowly leaked the details of the PRISM program. I think if he did that he would have been a genuine hero. But he didn't. He downloaded as much secret information as he could, and gave them to organizations that were openly hostile to American interests.
Consider the level of detail of methods and sources in the information leaked by Snowden. I think one would have to be extremely naive to believe that Russia and China did not get their hands on the Snowden leaks very quickly(and that's the most charitable interpretation). Therefore, the leaks weakened the US's geopolitical position and improved the position of their rivals.
For a command-in-chief to reward a person who did that with a Medal of Freedom would be a truly baffling choice.
Skinning is probably a slight misnomer. The skins are applied to the player's weapons and can be seen by all other players as well as spectators. They are, in effect, a status symbol.
This feeds into the supply and demand component quite heavily, as you can imagine. All secondary effects follow this initial relationship.
There are many situations in life where one does something that is "optimal" but factors beyond their control cause it to be unsuccessful. Being clear-eyed and able to distinguish between luck and non-optimal strategy is an important part of improving as a person.
There are times that changing the original strategy/task/behavior is not the optimal thing to do, but your "no luck" world view does not allow for that possibility.
I don't think that footage is frighteningly convincing.
It's pretty good, but not difficult to tell that it's not real. The bridge between pretty good and perfect when doing this type of thing is a very, very difficult problem.
It also requires substantial amounts of high quality, up close footage of the person. This may be work for major politicans, but is much more difficult for the vast majority of people.
I don't disagree that it will become more of a problem in the future, and in many cases "pretty good" will be sufficient, but I think people are overstating how much of a problem it will be.
It's a very simple cause-and-effect.