hnuser355

I agree. No need to make it emotional and confrontational with a “respect” interpretation in my opinion. Of course this is hard but if I can do it I imagine the best approach will be to simply make the best choices for my career while recognizing management has their own bizarre incentives I will never understand.

I simply buy a weekly newspaper and read it. I’m always 1-1.5 weeks behind so I never feel as “emotional” or follow things that closely. I want a general feel for some of the things happening in the world and that is it

I did a CS undergrad and skipped compilers, O.S., DBs, and many others cause I just took as many crosslisted math/CS electives as possible (at least a theorems or math heavy course like automata if I couldn’t do better), then the minimum CS requirements to graduate

Taleb is smart etc but he’s basically a rambling eccentric who I ignore at this point

This is what they did at my undergraduate university

Do all of these in order first:

Calculus 1 and 2

Linear algebra and multivariable calculus and an introduction to proofs / logic course (you are ready for some electives at this point)

Ordinary differential equations

Any of these can be done concurrently, choose one Analysis and one algebra :

Advanced calculus (eg “understanding analysis” by Abbott)

Linear algebra in the sense of finite dimensional vector spaces

Easier abstract algebra (senior level classes are eg Artin and rudin, these ones are more elementary textbooks)

Core Senior level courses that you take if you want to get good at math:

Analysis sequence (1 year on baby Rudin)

Algebra sequence (1 year on artin)

Topology (munkres)

Electives:

Probability (can be done after multivariable calc)

Linear optimization (after linear algebra + multivariable calc)

Logic (compactness completeness godel etc whatever, can be done after intro to proofs course but will probably make less sense if you didn’t study some more stuff first)

Numerical analysis (after ODEs I guess or calculus + linear algebra if you want to skip tht stuff)

Statistics (after probability)

Combinatorics - after calc 2 and linear algebra

Geometry - after multivariable calc, linear algebra, proofs

Intro Differential geometry: after advanced calculus

Don’t really have much more knowledge for graduate courses etc. or even some common ones like complex analysis. if you know the senior level core stuff you’re probably “good enough” to make some progress on a lot of things. Each of these classes is 100-200 hours of total study so it seems odd to me that someone will just try to study it on their own by there you go I guess

I believe this might be more prominent among uneducated folks of (at least in my neck of the woods) non-mainline American Protestant denominations. At least the doctors of the Catholic Church will specifically talk about preparation for death, dying well (also mentioned by Fred Rogers in the documentary I saw about him), etc.

Sometimes I wonder if people are actually really good at thinking in groups but the thought process is just too terrifying and different from what we could understand as individuals

So it’s not clear that the Idaho kid isn’t better than the average MIT admit, but it’s also not clear that he’d do better at MIT than going to his state or Montana state or something. (I mention this not to throw out state schools in the west but because one of the best texts on my area of research is by a guy from Montana State)

Thanks for your post, I’ve removed the numbers from mine as it appears they were likely quite inaccurate

To be honest, my number was based on my rembering of opinions from people who were in management but were certainly not experts on HR budgets or something. So it could be very wrong

Does that mean that the market is simply devaluing capitalists?

I’m not sure of numbers but I’d imagine a 70k salary would mean higher than purely salary costs (depending on company industry etc) after other expenses

His pretty face might leave your superiors with a better impression of your group. A friend manages a software group and actually told me that one of the best things to increase chances of getting a job with her group would be to pay more attention to my appearance and smile more. Also mentioned that just being interpersonally nice was much more important than actual abilities in her organization as long as you were good enough that the owners believed you knew what you were doing and she could justify keeping you there. Etc

Was it Seneca who mocked this line of thinking? If I remember right he mocked it by saying either

1) a good man is a good man and thus equal to other good men

Or

2) you proceed through so many qualifications and “but what if this guy was prettier or had nicer tone of voice than the other good man all else equal” etc until you admit that you include minute details like the exact placement of every hair follicle on some dudes head in your proposed total ordering of humanity

So true. My impression of one guy at my current organization is that he had some skills and productivity years in the past, but now he’s just given up and fiddles around on his phone while doing occasional low-effort tasks and trying to bully newcomers into doing things he can take credit for. Why he’s still there is beyond me. Very unlikely (in my opinion) that he could get away with this remotely.