Have you ever taught?

I have! My favorite students were the 55+ returning education students that really wanted to finally learn algebra and calculus.

Yes and I standby genxy’s comment. It was always a question of motivation, not ability.

And motivation was often impeded by either trauma or not finding a way to make it relevant to the student. Those are prereqs for learning anything. The common denominator for people that are good at something is that they liked it, so they did it more.

I know plenty of people that went through an engineering degree with me that do not like math, but they are competent at all the way up to what an electrical engineer needs to know, which is not research level math, but what most people would call advanced. I would never say I "like" math for example but I've always thought about it as something important to learn and get decent at to succeed in life.

I have way more interest in history and philosophy but the way I figured is I can learn all of that on my own because all you need is to read. Math is actually hard so I better get "trained by someone" at it.

I’m similar to you, except to upgrade my practical math skills at college I did cultivate a “liking” for math comparable to other technical areas I pursue. Namely, I started reading popular math books and articles, watching math youtubers, solving recreational puzzles from math periodicals… It was like, half actual interest and half contrived interest, seeing if I could develop in that direction. One summer when I had a lot of free time, with the help of a mathematician friend, I worked through a few advanced textbooks and video lecture series beyond anything I strictly needed. Progress was real but agonizing, and then I promptly forgot everything. It turns out that just maintaining a mid-to-late-undergraduate-level understanding of applied math is all I can be responsible for. It’s a responsibility I attend to, but my brain is only so mathy. At some point it becomes a question of both motivation and ability.

You also don't know the people who didn't make it through, because for whatever reason they aren't able to learn something they weren't able to like. Glad you were able to make it work.

I don't know the people that didn't make it through? You're under the impression I didn't meet anyone outside of those 25? And that I didn't have classmates all the way from first grade to university? Wat

I always find these types of explanations doubtful, because you can always dismiss someone of subpar ability as not trying hard enough or you could define trying hard enough in a way that is not defacto practical.

My experience teaching is limited (but I have taught some, to be clear) but I have found learned helplessness to be the biggest barrier. People have varying aptitudes for different tasks, and varying aptitude and a finite lifespan does imply some people have a lower ceiling than others in a given subject, but humans are powerful general learners. They don't generally reach their ceiling in most subjects. The limit for someone "bad at math" is almost certainly self-fulfilling prophesies they internalized.

Speaking for myself I have in the last five years or so been learning I have much more of a capacity for making art than I had thought. My art is nothing special, but I am improving every time I practice. But when I was younger I thought that I was just good at STEM-yy things and bad at other things. Relatively speaking I am better at STEM-yy than art-yy things, and I'm probably worse at art-yy things than most other people. But I have huge room for growth and I think I will eventually produce some beautiful watercolors.

As an aside, I've also found that almost everyone thinks they're bad at math? My friends with PhDs don't think they're good at math but they've forgotten more than I know about it. I think I'm bad at math but I can prove a thing or two. My spouse thinks they're bad at math, and they can't do the things I can do. But a few months ago they needed to do some simple algebra at work, and a coworker said, "dang, I wish I was good at math."

Somewhere out there Terence Tao is saying he's alright at math but he has nothing on that Euler fellow.

Could not agree more. I also taught for some time and generally had good results, almost everybody "got it".

There was one person, though, that I just could not get anywhere with. Even after several private lessons. Turned out that somehow she convinced herself that she will never get it and never be able to progress. Even if she did get it right one week, the next week was as if that never happened. I found no way across that barrier :(

I also agree. Doing university sudies in stem fiels is just.. doing the work, grinding until you get it. I was not very good at maths but i managed to pass the courses that I had. Most of my fellow students didnt.

It is what differentiates stem fields fron liberal arts, in my biased view. You are either talented at maths, physics, chemistry or you just grind, study with thr books snd exercises, until you know enough to pass the exams.

Coming from gymnasium/high schoolit is very different. There the teachers tell you what to do, at uni you have to figure out yourself how you need to study to get the results.

US universities have been known in Europe for being a childs play, if you were any good at all in stem fields

Yes.

But who will protect the interests of capital??

But won't somebody think of the robber barons!

At the very top, yes and unfortunately many workers on both sides of the fence run interference/collaborate for those at the top it’s one of reasons the Molly Maguire‘s never win or rarely win for too long.

Around the world "liberal" is synonymous with "capitalist". US is pretty unique in that it considers liberalism a leftwing ideology

Left/Right alignment is relative, and the American political center is...where it is, and has been drifting rightward since Bill Clinton's "Third Way".

No longer true; the left wing in the U.S. started splitting from the liberals over a decade ago and that's more or less complete at this point.

Yeah for sure, speaking purely on the American common framing of big L Liberals as akin to social liberals rather than classical/economic liberals.

Don't forget liberals too!

Consumers have a choice of not buying, so generally they do not lose to unions.

Not generally, no. Workers usually do have choice - they can work in a less desirable job, just as consumers can buy a less desirable product. At the extremes, both are serious - workers without income can starve and consumers for whom food is too expensive can starve.

mostly the government because the consumer has a lot of democratic power.

product regulations and antitrust as examples

I mean if that is your measure, then consumers lose more to capital than organized labor.

Altman is an idealist?

I read this as: I know ads are likely if not inevitable but I can’t say that while I’m trying to gain users and inspire trust but I’ll start to float even in this non-denial the justification for the thing I’m ultimately going to do.

Altman wanting to look idealistic and inspiring.

See it as a brand image advertising campaign of the time.

The ideal is "It would be ideal if everyone on the planet voluntarily paid me $20/month"

Most billionaires are idealists when it comes to this one particular ideal.

The opposite of an idealist is a materialist. The opposite of an ideologue is a pragmatist.

In this sense I think Altman is an idealist, he concerns himself primarily with ideas, not so much with material reality.

I think these binary labels are too simple to describe him.

That may be the point. Simple inflation adjustment gives us x but the real price is more or less than x. Why is that?

> Simple inflation adjustment gives us x but the real price is more or less than x. Why is that?

Restaurant economics are a function of ingredient costs and labour. I suspect ingredient costs are close to OP's estimated multiples. But real wages are way up since the 1950s. Anything with a large labour component of costs will have tended to rise faster than inflation, which is an average of goods and services.

(There are specialised metrics if you actually wanted to dig into this question.)

Are you saying the prices listed were just for the ingredients and not the actual cost to the person ordering? They mentioned they saw the price in a photo which suggest it is what the person would be charged. I get that labor costs would cause an increase of raw ingredient price comparisons for total prices. But if you could pay buy a burger for a nickel but now need $10, there is a definite issue in just a "simple" adjustment that suggests you'd only need $5. If the numbers are that far off because the simple needs to be more advanced, what's the point of the simple numbers? Bad data is worse than no data.

> Are you saying the prices listed were just for the ingredients and not the actual cost to the person ordering?

Sorry, no. I'm saying labour is probably a larger fraction of the burger's costs today than it was in the 1950s. (I'd naively guess profits are, too.)

That may be true, but I suspect that it’s also hard to compare apples to apples. A burger in 1959 is hard to compare to a burger today. Today’s burger almost certainly has twice as much meat. The invention of (and ubiquitous advertising of) the quarter–pounder means that everyone had to make their burgers larger to match. Sides are larger, drinks are larger, etc, etc.

But labor costs certainly have gone up too.

This would be a genuinly-interesting bit of analysis for someone to do. (Also do the patty melt!)

Inflation is a measure of change in overall purchasing power.

What a specific purchase costs is highly dependant on the inputs, the cost of its labour (which might grow faster or slower than the average wage), and a lot of other factors.

Food is way more expensive today than it was 50 years ago. Airplane tickets are way cheaper. Everyone has a cellphone now, and middle class families have multiple cars, but a trip to the doctor will mean that ~15% of the population will be on the verge of not paying their bills. On the other hand, I have access to ~every major piece of music ever made for ~$15/month, so that's something.

You’d have to go company-wide to sync schedules and norms. Not just opt in. Many would not like a 20% pay cut. The best talent would disproportionately leave.

Also, theoretically Meta is getting rid of their worst performers, so their cuts and declines in productivity would not be proportional, especially as the cuts inspire fear to motivate productivity from the remaining employees.

Does it inspire fear to motivate productivity?

Haha, no, it inspires motivation for finding a new job. Interview prep takes time!

> Does it inspire fear to motivate productivity?

> Haha, no, it inspires motivation for finding a new job. Interview prep takes time

Everyone's circumstances are different. Many people - especially those with dependents - would reasonably be afraid. Whether that would inspire lasting productivity is questionable. It could also inspire less productive ways of getting ahead.

Isn’t it both - ROI must exceed whatever cost benchmark?

"..is more of a function of cash flow potential "

"more of".

If you wanna finesse the discount rate by a few percentage points go ahead. Cash flows contribute more toward the end value number.

in b4 some numpty writes about the fed changing a market set rate.

Not if the actual vs stated reasons for the layoffs have nothing to do with AI.

As you note, most people aren’t power users. That core functionality is enough for 80%+ of users.

Even I, a definite though intermittent power user, am fine with the Google versions most of the time.

Collaboration also just feels faster in Google.

They let others run that costly costly costly race. It's not where Apple is most competitive.

We in the US can't hide forever.

Forever is a long time.

Once FSD, we will make rules about the software that will have the effect of excluding Chinese companies. I seriously doubt that I'll see Chinese cars here in my lifetime.

Cool, we can be like Cuba except we did it to ourselves