People should never be taken advantage of. If Khan Academy has the resources to pay people better than they should.
But, if they don't than I'm 100% with you. It's better to work on something worth doing for less money, then work on something you don't feel passionately about for more.
I joined Khan Academy as an intern in summer 2012 and have been with the company ever since. We're not going to top Facebook, but I can assure you that we compensate interns competitively. Given the massive contributions that interns like Elizabeth have made, nothing else would make sense to me.
It's like the difference between filling your house with african sculpture because you've been to africa once, versus having deep roots and understanding of the culture. There's no objective way to judge these issue but they still exist
the thing is that this perceived cost is actually much tinier than it may feel to a privileged individual. feel-good rules like "treat everyone the same" havn't cut it, objectively, statistically. there are real injustices that sail completely under the vantage point of privileged individuals but are doing real systematic harm
I love being outside, and walking (hiking) is actually one of my favorite activities. I actually have two cars right now, so I could drive to work if I wanted to, I prefer to walk. And it would kill my cars if I drove them every day as I have no place to plug them in at work (have to pay) and daily starting past -30C without plugin is going to drastically shorten the life of a vehicle.
One of the reasons I moved up here was to be outside in the environment, so it's enjoyable to throw on my jacket and gloves and get out there in it and watch the seasons/daylight/weather change day-to-day.
Remember too that in summer the days are ~20 hours long and I'm surrounded by beautiful mountains...
Just remember that the human brain is basically not set up for objectivity. Plenty of people who consider themselves rational are capable of making decisions that you would call unrational. Doesn't mean you need to live your life through a checklist, but it helps to be critical of thoughts like "I am a very rational person"
Sometimes I rationally realize that I am making an irrational decision, but I still prefer the "wrong" decision. For example, I may pick up a dirty penny in a street. The risk/reward is negative because the very slight possibility or disease or accident outweighs the very slight financial reward, but I prefer to pick up the penny anyway. Am I rational because of the analysis, or irrational because I make the wrong choice?
> Am I rational because of the analysis, or irrational because I make the wrong choice?
I think (to repeat others' points in different language) that to think of rational / irrational as a binary switch is bound to lead to trouble. In other words, I think that the question is whether an action, not a person, is rational or irrational. (Compare with questions of morality, where it is near-meaningless to ask "is this person good / bad?") Why not just "the analysis was rational, and the resulting 'wrong' choice was irrational?"
You should try to figure out why you make the decision to pick up the penny even though you know it's "irrational". Is it because you think pennies are good luck? Do you like having a penny in your pocket to mindlessly play with?
Once you figure out why you're still picking up pennies even though you know the financial reward is less than the risk then you can determine if it's rational or, if it's irrational, convince yourself not to do it.
If it takes five seconds to pick up the penny (that's maybe high but it's including time to notice, bend, put it in your pocket), you're valuing your time at $7.20 an hour.
(To be clear, there are other plausible rewards to picking up a penny, such as feeling lucky from the superstition. But you only mentioned a financial reward, and the financial impact is negative.)
The biggest reward is the emotion that you're maintaining your sense of order. Everything has a place, and the sidewalk is certainly no place for a penny.
Maybe you get some nice pleasure chemicals in your brain, or recall a pleasant experience from your past, which may outweigh the possibility of disease and accident.
I sometimes take a stick with horse hair stretched over its length, and pull it along steel cables stretched along a large wooden box. The risks are many, including getting chased out of the house, blisters on my fingers, etc. Am I irrational because I made the wrong choice?
I think you got it wrong. We are irrational no matter what. And we are blind to our own blindness, so we cannot even comprehend, that we are very irrational, unless, of course, we study it.
If this is something you are interested in, check out Daniel Kahneman's book.
EDIT: I would like to know the reason behind the downvote. Thanks.
> I think you got it wrong. We are irrational no matter what. And we are blind to our own blindness, so we cannot even comprehend, that we are very irrational, unless, of course, we study it.
I was the (or a) downvoter. While your point is certainly correct that humans are irrational animals and there is no way around it, that seemed essentially irrelevant to the specific question of whether performing a rational analysis, and then acting against it, should count as a rational or an irrational action. (To be fair, it is highly relevant to the discussion as a whole, just not, I think, to this thread.)
My detestation of observing penny-litter is of sufficient intensity that I would pay you a penny to pick up a penny. I dread that the fury-induced hand-tremor would cause me to drop the penny, leading to a catastrophic loop terminating with cupric entombment.
I think the key thing is that being a perfectly rational actor is a strange and twisting pursuit. Measuring your actions against another scale is more useful IMO. Being humane/considerate/farsighted (or any set of subjective values that you believe are important) make a better measuring stick than rationality
This is a good point--I would phrase it as whatever over-arching organizing value set or decision-making framework you choose to use (whether it be "go with your gut", Rationality Uber Alles, WWJD?, "don't be a dick", or whatever) does not absolve you of responsibility for the actions you take according to that framework. Using rationality or moral values or whatever as a means to develop self-awareness and maturity is a valid and useful exercise IMO, but I know too many people who feel like "I'm just doing what XXXXX says I should do" excuses their actions even though it was still their choice in the first place to do what XXXXX says.
Also, Antonio Damasio's work is an interesting complement/counterpoint to the overemphasis of cognitive rational thinking, and I'd highly recommend it. Descarte's Error is a good place to start, and makes the strong case that rationality is part of an embodied (literally) process upon which it depends.
Why does one have to focus on being humane/considerate/farsighted instead of being rational, rather than focus on both? We don't have to pick one measuring stick.
I certainly hope you don't think that being irrational will help you to be more humane/considerate/farsighted, or that being humane/considerate/farsighted means that one can't be rational.
That's fair. While I called myself rational, I would never claim to make exclusively rational decisions. I would not want to go down the rabbit hole of trying to define rationality, or force myself into the Procrustean bed of a specific definition. If rationalism turns into some sort of utopian or self consistent ideology, then I'll remain aloof from it.
At the same time, while the human brain isn't set up for objectivity, it is set up for survival -- including survival in a social milieu. Some non-rational behaviors such as emotion and stubbornness may be valuable survival traits.
If I were to put anything on my own checklist, it would be: "Did I give myself enough time to think about this?" I can be persuaded by reason, but on my own timeline, and I'm a terrible debater, so I don't change my opinions based on debate.
Someone learning to play the piano (an unnatural task) needs to monitor their behavior and look for good habits to reinforce and bad habits to unlearn. But you do that during practice, not performance. By the time you're ready to perform, playing the right way should seem "natural" even though it's still a highly artificial task.
I think there's something like that here. Thinking rationally is an unnatural act and some folks are interested in figuring out how to better train for it. Maybe it's a bit of a weird hobby, but I'm happy there are people investigating it.
However, it's still early days for figuring out which training techniques are effective. This checklist is a sketch of bad habits to look for, but how best to use it isn't settled yet.
(There are places for checklists in production. They're useful in high-risk situations where error has to be eliminated. Pilots rely extensively on checklists, and they're starting to be used more in hospitals.)
TPB was effectively a modern cultural library for millions. If a child from a poor household wants to experience the greatest music or films created by the artists of our era, and doesn't have hundreds of dollars to pursue that wish, then I think that we are doing ourselves AND the artists a huge disservice by shutting them out and telling them: Go watch some youtube videos and play some shitty flash games, kid.
I never thought about it that aspect. Good point. I did have a similar thought yesterday though at Barnes and Noble, when you check out this time of year they ask if you want to buy a book for a charity book drive. I figured most of the people who would be interested in reading would have already found a way to get material without getting ripped off by a bookstore. Be it pirating, project gutenberg library or thrift shop
You may be surprised at the barriers to that for a young person with parents unable to devote time to assisting them with that. Minors need a parent to sign for them(since someone has to be liable for the late fees and repair fees if a book is trashed). In rural communities there may not be a library, or transportation. The school library's book selection is almost always heavily censored, and/or hopelessly out of date.
What about the barriers involving possession of a computer, access to fairly high-speed internet, and the technical knowledge to use Torrents and video codecs and so on?
I'd say that a random person is more likely to have access to a computer and usable internet than access to the library. The "technical knowledge" involved in downloading videos involves having a torrent client and a codec pack installed (two download-and-run installers.. my gran could do it).
Then, you go to your torrent site, click on what you want, and wait. Nowadays, it's no harder than downloading any other random file from any other random site.
I would make the argument that if some of the silliness was stated for what it was, gullible rich people would spend their money on something equally frivolous that did more to drive innovation
