In my high school they had a lot of words for this attitude, including "faggot", "square", "nerd" and "nerd faggot". As someone who grew up in this environment, I'm very interested in the critiques of people such as myself who allegedly held these attitudes.
I never said they would be less productive--I had no real opinion about allowing employees to go hike the Appalachian trail.
I don't think employers offer Appalachian trail leave, simply because they're not mandated to. They are mandated to offer leave via FMLA. Maybe REI offers it.
Not intending to debate anything here, just framing the FMLA requirements. The mother and father are allowed 12 weeks of combined leave. If they both take off, it's 6 weeks each. And businesses are not required to pay you while you're off. They just can't fire you.
"Both or either covered parent may take 12 weeks for the birth of a newborn or the placement of an adopted or foster child. If both parents work in positions covered by the FMLA, they will both be entitled to leave for an expanding family."
In a family with an expectant mother and father, both are allowed 12 weeks of leave under FMLA.
You are correct, however, that this leave is unpaid, employers can require you to use all accrued vacation/sick leave prior to FMLA, and you aren't guaranteed your same job back, just an equivalent job.
> A husband and wife who are eligible for FMLA leave and are employed by the same covered employer may be limited to a combined total of 12 weeks of leave during any 12-month period ...
But generally, even if they're both covered, they can both only take 12 weeks if the mother is somehow incapacitated.
>The mother is entitled to FMLA leave for any period of incapacity due to pregnancy, for prenatal care or for her own serious health condition following the birth of a child. The husband is entitled to FMLA leave if needed to care for his pregnant spouse who is incapacitated or if needed to care for her during her prenatal care, or if needed to care for the spouse following the birth of a child if the spouse has a serious health condition. See Serious Health Condition for more information.
You say that it's very sad for people to lose their jobs, but how sad is it if a business does not grow as fast as it might have, and so doesn't employ those people in the first place?
>They perceive (correctly, BTW, from a statistical perspective) that if you're born poor, there isn't much you can do.
How can you blithely state this "fact" given that the article itself shows that a poor person who graduates college has a better-than-average income distribution (every percentile is better off than the population as a whole).
It's really frustrating to me that people like you don't make any honest effort to distinguish between objective "lack of hope" where poor people actually cannot improve their situation, with subjective "lack of hope" where people for whatever reason are unable to be motivated to take actual opportunities that could help them. Clearly these are different phenomena and conflating them is irresponsible and dangerous.
While I don't agree with everything you said, you are right that modern economics puts a lot of emphasis on the bond market.
Their reasoning is that the bond market is like a giant, distributed bank. Bondholders borrow short-term, and invest long-term, thus providing liquidity for businesses that need to make long term investment.
The problem is, we have no idea what the actual economics of liquidity provision is. The standard Diamond–Dybvig model is used to justify bailing out the banks (and also the "shadow" banks, i.e. the bond market) when things go bad. But if the Diamond–Dybvig model is correct, then liquidity provision is a mechanical process that could be done just as well by the government, and the bond market is just a way to get the free market to do this at exorbitant cost.
We need better theories to understand liquidity. I think the best work in this area is by Holmstrom and Tirole. Holmstrom's nobel price should help raise the profile of this work.
Actually the smug, dismissive tone of your comment is equally common on HN. Neither you nor the OP have given direct evidence on the matter, and it is presumptuous to think that the narrative you presented trumps the OP's vague reference to twin studies.
A quick google study yields "Using 15 years of data on Finnish twins, we find that 24% (54%) of the variance of women’s (men’s) lifetime income is due to genetic factors and that the contribution of the shared environment is negligible."[0] But I don't want to claim this is the final word, it's just the kind of evidence that is useful rather than blithe assertions and name calling.
As someone who was bullied for being a nerd, your statement is very triggering. Do you think there is a way we can encourage all people to explore tech without denigrating people with certain personality types/interests?
I think lordnacho has a point, in that programming was previously considered to be an unworthy pursuit and considered antisocial (the arena of the so-called nerds). It's great that school-aged children are now being widely encouraged to explore coding.
Not only that but programmers and STEM professions are starting to be highlighted in pop culture in very positive ways such as Big Hero 6.
Contrast that with movies from the 80s or 90s and geeky types might have been heroic, but it was always despite them being geeky, not because of it. Like it came with social baggage they needed to overcome vs being their source of power.
I'm also a nerd (and proudly so, to this day) and I was bullied for it in school.
But I don't see the parent calling people nerds in a negative light. It can be read that they think programming is no longer being thought of as something you can only do with kids who are especially interested in that kind of thing, but instead can be taught to all kids. "Nerd" was just their shorthand for kids who are interested in logic and knowledge more than other kids.
I guess the comment triggers me in the same way as reading "you don't have to be effeminate or gay to be a male ballet dancer" might trigger some people.
While it doesn't directly paint gay or effeminate men in a negative light, it also doesn't do enough to distance itself from the negative stigma men who don't follow traditional male roles face.
I think that non-nerdy people can't understand what it's really like to be nerdy. They attribute things to nerds (like acne or hubris) that aren't actually part of what a nerd really is. They just see a partial pattern and then paint the whole group with it.
Attempting to educate them about this doesn't really help, IMO. It's just extra stress, and so I try to just ignore their ignorance and go on my way.
Plus, I've noticed that kids these days put intelligence on a pedestal, and that's been awesome to see. The idea of a whole generation growing up and respecting people who can think well... I love it.
Well, of course. If you look at the sort of thing ordinary people are interested in, programming is now quite prominent in several respects:
- Every interesting business requires programmers. Uber, AirBnB, Tesla, Facebook, Google -everything that is making headlines- require coders as a key ingredient, rather than as waterboys. That wasn't always the case when I was growing up.
- It's clear for everyone to see that coding jobs pay better than most jobs.
- There's a degree to which coding jobs are interesting which is becoming ever more clear to people. Where jargon was once a sign that you were a nerd, now it's a sign that you're informed on some of the things driving modern society.
I think most of the people making these comments would identify as anti-racist. Furthermore, they would be shocked by similar comments addressed to students from Africa, the Middle East or Latin America.
Personally I think everything said about Asian students is true, I just wish we could be as open and realistic when discussing other cultures, rather than simply blame "racism" when people from other cultures encounter difficulties.
It's a general pattern that comments that would be considered "racist" when applied to any other non-White culture, are ok when applied to Asia (see the constant flood of orientalist articles about Japan on HN).
It's only natural to feel more empathy for people in situations we've been in, but this isn't the entirety of morality. I've never been a cow but I go out of my way to avoid causing suffering to cows and other animals.
Rich people haven't necessarily experienced much hardship, so they need to have a more abstract kind of empathy, but this doesn't make them worse people. Indeed, if a rich person felt that had done enough by paying taxes, I wouldn't blame them. From a utilitarian perspective, I would rather have another person who pays $100,000 in taxes and gives $0 to charity than someone who pays $20,000 in taxes and gives $1,000 to charity.
