To be clear: you like money, but you will not earn money.
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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Poor and middle-income people earn money. Rich people just take it from the people who earn it.
Passive Income has been outpacing earned income for decades. The best job to have is a giant pile of money in a stock account. You barely even have to trade it. Blue Chip stocks are generating double digit returns. All off other people's labor.
30 years ago when I started heading down the computer science path, nothing about it seemed evil.
Honestly at this point in my software career (~10 years), it's not evil per se, but I don't feel great about essentially existing to help rich people (VCs, PE, etc.) get richer. But I suppose that's a problem that isn't limited to IT.
Certainly not limited to IT. One of my professors from many years was an aerospace engineer^1^. He recounts to us the time that he busted his ass on some design for a long time and managed to make some huge cost savings. And then after it was done he realized that all he really did with his extra hard work was help some executives and stockholders get a bit richer. Not long after that he switched to education.
^1^Not in the defense industry
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I've had this thought for a while and I definitely agree that a lot of software I've built is a net negative to society as a whole and the only reason why I get paid as well as I do is because I'm helping rich assholes suck value out of society more efficiently.
For instance, I've worked on CMSs that automated 90% of the processes for medium-large insurance companies. Sure, it may result in a marginal price reduction for insureds (lol), but it almost certainly has led to fewer staff being hired to the benefit of the overlords. If more and more middle-class white-collar jobs gets replaced by software, that helps put downward pressure on wages. At the end of it all, are the marginally lower prices worth it to society, when everyone has a lower wage or no well paying job forcing them to participate in the gig economy and such?
It's a depressing thought, and I've been trying to break into research engineering roles or something of the sort to get away from my current role but it's been an uphill task.
In a sane world, automating away tedious work would be an unqualified good. Too bad we live in a capitalist clown world where rich assholes are able to capture 120% of the benefits of automation, leaving regular people to make up the difference.
Computer science is no more evil than most of the industries on the chart; they all offer ethical jobs as well, they just tend not to pay as well as the evil ones
I feel like I mostly got away with it without being evil thus far. I ended up working for a foundation and the team I'm in builds internet access (and layer 2 transport) for institutions of higher education. But maybe network engineering isn't really the typical outcome, most of my friends became developers.
Did you try any of these and not like it? Yes -> geology
Should be a subbranch of "ambivalent towards safety" - How do you like to endanger yourself -> Blowing things up = Chem Eng or Hit things with hammers = Geology
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Then when you go to grad school you realize you have to like all of them.
"Do you collect locks?" is also a good one.
I never heard of LockPickingGeologist
He's on YouTube
Came here to say I felt under represented lol
Economics is STEM???
Economics is science but with resources.
Economics is like ecology for the financial / resource world.
I'm under the impression that it's half math half psychology of groups.
Yeah, part of ecology looks at relationships between groups of organisms, and economics looks at relationships between economic agents. Those relationships require understanding of behaviours and motivations of those groups.
That's a great way to put it. The ecology of money goods and services.
Yes. In the heirarchy of science, it ranks just below literature.
Well, whilst it's basically Astrology, it does decorate itself heavily with Mathematics.
(A more serious answer is: it depends on which part within Economics one is talking about. For example Behavioural Economics does use the Scientific Method).
Econometrics, data science, behavioural economics, game theory, micro and macroeconomics, public policy, all of it uses the scientific method and is empirical.
Could you clarify which part of economics you believe is not scientific?
First, Game Theory is from Mathematics, not Economics.
Next, Policy Making is Politics, not Economics. Sure, many Economists end up working in it, but I wouldn't actually blame Economics for all the Conclusion-Driven Model Crafting that goes on in there - that abuse of Mathematics and modelling to overwhelm and swindle "people who aren't good at maths" is a perversion of even Economics.
As for the rest, the lack of reliability of central bank forecasts of thing such as GDP Growth and Inflation would indicate that whatever they used to base their forecasts on isn't reliable enough for publishing.
As the saying goes, Economists have predicted 8 of the last 2 Recessions.
Back in the day when I worked in Finance and followed those things, it was quite extraordinary just how much of that was flipped around and re-explained when the final numbers came out and things turned out to be very different from earlier forecasts.
More in general a lot, if not most, of Macroeconomics does not seem to be Falsifiable: whenever the mathematical models created based on the various theories in Macroeconomics fail to predict what happens (often by a huge distance) it's invariably blamed on "unexpected factors" - if "unexpected factors" are making your models fail by a huge distance you don't really have a theory that explains reality and are really just practicing what's at best semi-guided guessing, same as how in the old days people predicted the weather for the next day by the color of the sunset and how much the bones of old sailors were hurting.
You could literally apply this nonsensical logic to any other field that uses maths and say "it's mathematics, not X". This is a non-argument.
"Policy Making is Politics", politicians implement policies, but the ones behind the scenes who actually do the math to optimise these policies and advise politicians are economists.
"Conclusion-Driven" this is just plain false. There is an overwhelming amount of empiricism in the economics field.
"Economists have predicted 8 of the last 2 Recessions" .... and have learned from these mistakes. These were described and studied in detail in my course, and you then go on to say that macroeconomics do not seem to be falsifiable. Yes there are no ways to ethically have experiments in economics, but there are plenty of workarounds to not being able to experiment. Natural experiments are rare but they do exist, as well as a myriad of other data science methods to derive conclusions from real life scenarios.
Finally, "when I worked in Finance". Finance is a single field of economics, it does not encompass all there is to learn from economics. There is also a conflation from those who study finance courses that what is taught in economics courses is similar. It isn't. Economics is a STEM field, while finance is a business field.
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Having done a degree, yes. It's entirely empirical.
It falls into both Science and Math
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accurate, and for the record, EPA, you can take my DCM wash bottle out of my DEAD DEGREASED HANDS
Look, I'm all for green chemistry, and I'll switch to using safer, more environmentally friendly reagents and solvents the second they are close to the efficacy of the real deal.
Until then, leave my acetone and heavy-metal catalysts alone!
Acetone is rather green (7 in GSK solvent guide), but I for one haven't used heavy metal catalysts in a year, and more if you don't count palladium
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Like, so what if we store our tBuLi with other low-flash point flammables? And pyrophoric oxidizers? In the same bin? That's stuck in a block of ice in the 30-year-old freezer because it hasn't ever been de-iced?
What if the power goes out for a long period of time and the tBuLi goes for a swim? Or we say you have to de-ice the freezer?
Haha sounds crazy. And, I wouldn't have to do the shitty quench before disposal. Or work on that project anymore.
Because you're injured or because PI fires you?
Haha, yeah :)
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:)
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Oh, while you're here, does this still smell like DCM? I can't tell if I rotavapped it all off and the NMR tubes all need aqua regia (sorry my b).
Aqua regia isn't even that scary. Try pipetting pure bromine while it shoots itself out from constantly evaporating
Aqua regia ain't no piranha, and also ain't the most concerning thing in my post lol.
Ah bromime. Super dense, low MW, and low bp, all making dosing accurate amounts a heroic feat. If you store your bromine cold, you can precool the pipette by sucking up and spitting out a few times before transfering, which helps cut down the vapor.
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"Frickin' beautiful."
Moment of silence for those who thought environmental science doesn't have maths. (No money is true though.)
After indirect
Do you want to feel like you are in a secret society? Yes -> actuarial sciences
There could be one more to differentiate engineers from architects. Do you like to solve problems (engineer) or create them (architect)? Fun flowchart!
That is literally the path I took to become an Env. Scientist
Same for computer science
You know it’s a complete and proper list because it excludes that pseudo-science Geology.
Geology is just a specialized field of chemistry. Biology too for that matter.
Well and chemistry is just applied electron physics
We could just skip a few steps down the list and agree it all just comes down to maths.
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