- Bryan Caplan checks the age-adjusted return on sheepskins. Fascinating. As someone who does a reasonable amount of interviewing/hiring in the IT industry...I can say that the amount of weight I put on a college degree is precisely zero. Usually, I don't read the resume that far down. Years of experience * conversation measured Tech-IQ. Further and further, the signaling (-only?) model of education seems overwhelming.
- Envy uber alles: Henderson finds a paper that measures the laffer curve on capital gains taxes. Apparently, counting ONLY capital gains (not secondary effects), the curve Maximum is just under 10%. RTWT.
- David Brin has a great BIG list of good sci-fi. his list is far better than the Reader's Digest one...what with being a sci-fi author and all.
- Robin Hanson praising religion. As per my recent fights with ImNotHerzog...it's pretty clear that religious people are happier. I'm moderately convinced that it's MOSTLY community + gratitude effects. I'm also convinced that for maximum hedonic benefit from religion, one should be either Mormon or Buddhist...with Mormonism maximizing near-term happiness for relatively low life cost (silly beliefs about magic underwear and sky gods), and Buddhism's meditation practices maximizing long-term joy at relatively high life cost (compassion meditation practice for 20 years). A goals-first kinda guy like me doesn't dispute the utility of religion...just the truthiness.
- Casanocha asks the question -- How do you deal with high talent folks who very simply will have other, better opportunities in the future. Great think.
- Isegoria finds important numbers: The real job market is informal, with no resumes, and only personal recommendations. At 80% of the market.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
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4 comments:
Isegoria's link tallies well with my experience - I've gotten about 80% pf my jobs through informal means.
Re: religion - I have constant argument/discussions with a friend regarding that. He's hardcore, just shy of evangelical atheist. I'm Orthodox Christian largely for community/child-rearing/aesthetic/historical/Pascal's wager reasons.
I would argue that Orthodoxy is a good choice for agnostics - if you're already a high future time oriented type with a conventional lifestyle by choice (me, for example) it's a good fit. Gorgeous services, singing and icons, etc. A good judeo-christian ethos for the kids, and minus the senseless legalism of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
Nice dodge, too, on dogma - rather than explain to the point of idiocy, on many things Orthodoxy stops short and says, "It's a mystery." Makes things easier to swallow for the mostly agnostic.
Perfidy,
1. 80% is low for me.
2. I've spent 20 years in epistemology. I am INCAPABLE of doing the "it's a mystery" thing. I expect that someone with less time in the depths of Hume would have less problem with that than I do.
3. I think Pascal's wager is crazy nonsense.
4. I'm very happy to be supportive of your Orthodox-y, even as a hardcore atheist.
5. I'm told that Episcopalian churches are the place to be for athiests in Texas. Or Reform synagogues.
Not saying that it is philosophically acceptable answer in any sort of rigorous sense - just less annoying.
I can see Anglican being the same way, especially if they use the old Book of Common Prayer - gorgeous language, written like the KJV Bible.
The way I view it, it's a hedge for the kids - a set of default values in ethics that aren't just abstract rules but more or less coherent. Less chance for screw up than improvising a new moral code from scratch as a teenager.
I've when I was younger and in a near-anti-theistic mode, I still regarded religion as providing valuable socialization.
I think that's a large part of why atheists tend towards liberal political views, and regard things like homeschooling with revulsion; their socialization was pretty much exclusively through governmental organizations. Dismantling schools to them is dismantling society.
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