I empathize with this article, not much about a manager's schedule is energy-giving, and plenty can be energy-taking.
However, I have found a significant source of endorphins through community activities. I've been part of committees, co-chair of a technical special interest group, and have been invited to speak at major events. Perhaps amplified as someone who used to harbour a lot of social anxiety, I get a very nice rush of endorphins from these extracurricular activities. I definitely encourage other managers to volunteer for groups and events related to their specialty.
Can confirm. Most psychology undergraduate classes at research universities offer free/extra marks for research participation. Most studies leverage purely these participant pools, with behavioural psych perhaps being the area where this is seen the most. As such, most behavioural psych PIs at these universities won't even budget for research participant honorariums.
My initial thought was "Yes, you're absolutely right. That must shift the results", and I think that selecting for any particular subset of the overall population will shift it, but given that the researcher is already using a convenience sample (i.e., easily available college students) is it really going to change it more than the convenience sample already does?
Like, I can see there being a difference between a truly random sample from the overall population vs. students who are required to participate, but how much of a difference are you going to see between local students who volunteer vs. local college students doing this 'as part of their homework'.
Yeah, the biggest problem seems to be taking a bunch of extremely hormonal 18-20 year olds in an awkward and idiosyncratic social situation (university in general, and often forced dorm life for undergrads), and then calling that a universal study of human nature. Over and over and over again.
It’s not the only thing to shift the results. I took one of those surveys asking the classic question of whether I’d like money now, or a decent bit more money in a few months.
There I was, earning nothing, a little shy on cash, but I had a job offer in a few months for a decent little software job. I said I preferred the money now.
Uhhhh doesn't that violate informed consent? "Participate in a study or don't graduate" doesn't feel as consensual as research ethics normally require...
When I took intro psych in 1986, we were required to do 3 studies, but some of the studies did offer cash. Those usually were the first to get filled. I think I only got money for one of the three.
The animal might not care but we should. There's a sustainability factor that should be included in decision making around harvesting product in general. Marijuana is a decent example. Once turned to flower, the whole pant gets killed for harvesting. The product (flower) is worth a lot more than the remaining plant.
With shark finning, the product (fin) is worth less than the shark even by the most conservative estimate.
For anyone who enjoys future world-building that dives deep into religious and political systems, I recommend Ada Palmer's Terra Ignotta series. She's an Associate Professor of Early Modern European History and the College at Chicago University, and creates a future (set in 2425-ish) using rich historical cultural references that is also not terribly improbable.
>cigarettes and alchohol have massive black markets to bypass heavy regulations.
Are you speaking on the US or worldwide? A quick search doesn't produce any reliable statistics that indicate this. I have never once heard of anyone purchasing alcohol on the black market. Cigarettes, sure, but even then it's typically only very low-income folks purchasing cheap, illegal tobacco that is generally not of great quality. This is in stark contrast to marijuana where high-grade product can be purchased on the "street".
I suspect that once(if) pot goes legal the black-market will consist mostly of cheap, poor quality marijuana. This should take a nice chunk out of the profits that gangs see from marijuana distribution.
FWIW, as someone who currently resides in a recreationally legal state (Oregon), everyone I know who uses marijuana both medically and recreationally chooses to do so with legally purchased Marijuana. It's more convenient, safer, and typically higher quality than an non-legal state.
Blackmarket alcohol is not uncommon in the US. Particularly among poor white and hispanic populations. Most cultures have their equivalent of moonshine. You can easily buy illegally manufactured alcohol in every corner of Appalachia, basically all of the south, and poorer areas of every blue state including California and New York (most of NY being rural, and not particularly affluent, there's a healthy trade in illegal alcohol there as well, it is then sold in NYC as well).
You can get hooked up with illegal alcohol in basically every liquor store in every state in Appalachia, if you know someone that works there. It's commonly sold under the table so to speak.
edit: for wherever the downvotes are coming from - yes, I do know this stuff for a fact. I grew up in Appalachia, I know for a fact that what I'm saying is extremely common, I saw just about every aspect of the illegal alcohol trade first-hand. From that I came to learn second-hand the scope and nature of it up and down the east coast of the US and other parts of the country. It's easy enough to google this subject as well if you're skeptical.
But large criminal syndicates funded by blackmarket alcohol are very much a thing of the past. At least in the USA.
I guess I technically know quite a few people who make "black market" whiskey. It's not legal to distill without lots of licensing and these people do sell bottles to friends and friends-of-friends.
But it's Really Hard to understate the difference between poor folks running cottage industries around moonshine and the sprawling violent criminal enterprises that flourished around the alcohol trade during prohibition.
(e: also, illegal alcohol isn't just a poor person thing. Plenty of wealthy folks illegally distill, they just normally aren't motivated to sell.)
> it's Really Hard to understate the difference between poor folks running cottage industries around moonshine and the sprawling violent criminal enterprises that flourished around the alcohol trade during prohibition.
Certainly. And it's some gargantuan scale different versus the illegal drug trade as a comparison (0.1% as large perhaps). My point was that it isn't particularly uncommon, the underground illegal alcohol trade (it's also not monetarily massive in size as you're noting, which is why it exists at all, local police mostly look the other way so long as it stays small'ish).
I concur. As a teacher and mentor to students, I find that assigning the label of "genius" to anyone famous for their accomplishments can have a negative affect on young learner's goals. They often think "oh, they're just a genius, that's how they've accomplished X". I try and dispel this, giving them examples of how most "geniuses" just worked really hard on one thing, and that if they focus and work hard on the one thing they are passionate about they will find that someday they may be referred to as a "genius".
Yes. They worked to get to the limits of their abilities, and that's how they accomplished so much. Without that work, their potential would have been wasted.
Everyone's limits are at a different location for different tasks, and they can be pushed to some extent, but not indefinitely. (If nothing else, people eventually die.) Finding how far your limits in a useful or fun area can be pushed is a worthwhile task as well, and progress is measured by change relative to your past, not someone else's.
So we sit between two tragedies:
On the one hand, we have people who believe genius is magic, and unapproachable, who never work to find what their level is, and never work to push it out.
On the other, we have people who think any level can be attained through hard work, who work themselves into burnout or worse trying to reach goals their lives aren't long enough to attain, and who never appreciate the progress they have made.
I think the issue is that SF is the only one doing these things, thus attracts homeless from all over North America. When I did some volunteer work in Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, several times I heard homeless folk speak of their dreams of sneaking across the order to be homeless in SF.
As a customer, you sound like a retailer isn't ready to adapt to the customers needs. Buying multiple sizes and returning the ones that don't fit is no different than trying the clothes on in a changing room and keeping the ones that fit, except it's possible from a remote location.
>It's also unbelievably damaging to environment
Citation needed. Are we talking about the fuel costs from picking up and delivering a package?
>customers like this aren't worth anything to us
It sounds like you have an attitude around retail that isn't very future-proof. I feel that, if your attitude persists, soon you will find that the customers do not think your business is worth anything to them.
We are in business to earn money, give a great service, not to support "spoiled" 1st-world customers, and made a conscious decision not doing this kind of service. Obviously, non-standard sizes are a problem you can't avoid while shopping online and sometimes we can negotiate a return back to manufacturer even after outfits were opened/used, but we can't afford to subsidy customers in this fashion. If they could find a better deal elsewhere, we would be out of business for sure, but we aren't.
Why exactly is this unbelievably damaging to environment is an exercise left to the reader.
Like food business must deal with the cold-chain, Clothes businesses have distinctive features other retail areas don't have, there's a reason fitting rooms exists in clothing brick & mortar stores.
How do you replicate the fitting room experience online? with colors you can see differently on a monitor, texture you can't feel, sizes for each body type that are different, etc. , the best way today is to order more and return.
> Why exactly is this unbelievably damaging to environment is an exercise left to the reader.
Well people need to find clothes that fits them. So they're either left with going to a brick & mortar store, or ordering online and returning items that don't fit.
Me and all other customers driving to the outlet malls (assuming that mall has all the stores we're interested in, otherwise drive to each store separately), and driving back in our cars is certainly more damaging to the environment than one extra shipping, given that UPS, USPS, Fedex and everybody involved in the transportation business is making sure they're wasting the least amount of gas.
I was just thinking about a compromise model: what if a retailer would deal with the send/return cost once as a bit of configuration and customer acquisition cost and profile the choices to a standard type of fit. Then from that point on you could shop just for the type of clothing that will fit you well, and would only be able to return if you could show that it wasn't the case.
It obviously wouldn't work with standard brands of clothing since the fit there can be so variable, but if they clothing would be engineered for this I could see it working. It would be an interesting trade off for customers to consider. In the end you get lower prices, unless the real standardization is too costly.
Seems like something lots of people would go for. It seems like more and more people are aware of all the things that are priced into goods, like the cost of physical shops or the cost of shipping/returns for online retailers.
Yes, if we could employ some advanced model (ML or alike) to estimate fit depending on previous experience of the customer, that would be a huge efficiency gain. Actually, it might be the next big thing when you think about it...
When Bjørn Lomborg and James Hansen agree that something (the Paris agreement) is a bad idea, I am willing to put aside the various world leader's enthusiasm and apply a bit of skepticism. Is capping the CO2 output of developed nations really the best and fairest approach here? I don't have the answers, but I'm not sure Paris does either.
Can you name anything that doesn't have two people with opposite opinions on either side of it?
e.g. minimum wage to be higher/lower, to have more/less nuclear weapons, higher/lower taxes
edit: I just looked up Lomberg's opinion, and it turns out his response to Paris is almost exactly the opposite of Hansen's. Hansen wants to increase the price of carbon, Lomberg says "Instead of trying to make fossil fuels so expensive that no one wants them – which will never work – we should make green energy so cheap everybody will shift to it."
Hansen wants to increase the price of carbon across the board. One of the possible main issues is that a country like China is still not classified as a developed country and isn't bound to Article 9, a significant component of the Paris agreements.
Then he should have provided that reasoning and implored other nations to add those reforms to the agreement. Just backing out is cowardly and shows he doesn't actually care.
I think the problem in USA right now is that a very vocal part of the country is very much against the president and his every decision will be judged without listening to his reasoning, that's a very bad situation, and I can't imagine how any president can be productive in this environment...
Edit: I was not implying that what he did with Paris Agreement is right/wrong, I was just trying to tell that it's hard to work in an environment where every decision you make is judged with negativity right away.
The GOP and Trump are doing what the Koch brothers paid them to do. Many GOP lawmakers signed the “No Climate Tax” pledge, drafted by "Americans for Prosperity" that was funded by the Koch brothers. If a GOP lawmaker shows support for green energy, they would see their campaign money dry up, or a primary challenger arise(1).
You see, that's a classic example of that. No matter what information I provide you now - you are already looking at it with negativity and it will be near impossible to change.
Okay, but that's basic table stakes for any discussion in which you want to change entrenched parties' minds.
In the meantime, you didn't bother to actually provide anything outlining his reasoning. Which is fine, because having listened to his speech announcing the decision, I can state that virtually none of his stated reasons appear to have any sort of relationship with reality. Which is seemingly par for the course for his administration — is it any wonder people are so skeptical of virtually anything he says?
For starters, he argues that it allows China and India to build coal plants, while allowing the US to build none. Besides the agreement not even having the word coal in it, the entire thing allows countries to come up with their own standards, that they self-enforce. If the US decided our standard was "a coal plant in every home", it wouldn't actually violate any term of the agreement.
you are already looking at it with negativity and it will be near impossible to change.
Well, same can be said of you: I actually wanted to see reasoning and am willing to change my mind on the subject (well, actually not even change, as i don't have a single fixed stance on it because I know I lack the insight), but you're not providing information, instead responding with more negativity :]
I was not talking about this particular climate change action that he did, I was trying to say "in general" it's hard to change person's mind when he is already negatively looking at the subject.
However, I have found a significant source of endorphins through community activities. I've been part of committees, co-chair of a technical special interest group, and have been invited to speak at major events. Perhaps amplified as someone who used to harbour a lot of social anxiety, I get a very nice rush of endorphins from these extracurricular activities. I definitely encourage other managers to volunteer for groups and events related to their specialty.