This is only partially related to the article but I still feel it is relevant and I'd like to know if anyone has data to support either side on this. Summed up, it explains that asocial violence or antisocial aggression in general are directly correlated with warmer climates.
If the burden of proof is on the prosecution then, similarly, why isn't the burden on the victim to prove they were actually sexually harrassed? This isn't victim-BLAMING. This is simply an accuser having to prove their case and there is nothing wrong with that.
Because there is often a massive power imbalance between the harasser and the victim.
Either way, for any legal consequences to take place, the victim must prove his/her accusation.
There is no system in the world that can protect people's careers and reputations. If a false accusation is made and the accused person can prove it, then a lawsuit will often be filed (as in the case above).
Why isn't there something synonymous with a grand jury convening privately to determine if the case has enough merit to go forward? This seems like a step in the right direction to protect reputations.
Otherwise, it is reminiscent of the false accusations about political candidates in the 1940s/1950s making wildly false accusations, which forced their opponents to spend time and money to defend the claims. It still happens today as well although it seems easier to defend claims via social media and the 24hr news cycle having to keep up with all sorts of stories that draw people's attention.
Suggest ab exercises to her as well. It could be that her ab muscles aren't strong enough so her back is taking on more load than it should. Works the same with basically any front/rear muscle pairs (pecs & lats, biceps & triceps, etc.)
Have her try to stick with exercises that are more upright ab exercises. Roman chair is a better choice than sit-ups.
Also, gluteal exercises that don't put too much weight on the back help as well such as leg extensions pushing back with that foot strap on your foot work well.
The best ab exercise that I have found is a heavy ass deadlift. Barbell squats are good too. They actually train _core strength_ rather than just abs, which is what you need. The advice is: start with compound barbell exercises like squat and deadlifts, then incorporate others as needed. Don't ignore cardio.
Deadlifts and squats, properly performed (and in many instances, performed improperly) are not hard on the back. If you start with an empty bar and add a little weight each time, they will make every part of your back stronger and more resilient to the vagaries of life as a physical being.
The problem isn't training people to behave like ants for efficiency reasons. That shouldn't be difficult. The problem is people not planning ahead which translates to slamming on the brakes to make a lane change to exit, not speeding up quickly enough to merge smoothly with traffic which translates to the braking shockwave effect on the cars behind them, and finally, people's self-serving attitudes that translate to cutting other people off/weaving in and out of lanes/not letting others merge/etc.
TL;DR - This has been rehashed over and over but the same results are these: Ants do what is best for the colony. People do what is best for themselves.
This already exists. I posted links in response to the OP referencing a RadioLab episode where precisely this occurred over Fallujah and helped to track down suicide bombers/bomb makers.
I agree and furthermore I think that excessive praise even when someone is just doing what's expected of them can be harmful.
Anecdotal: My boss used to go around praising people in general for just doing their jobs. I was even on the receiving end of so many "have I told you how awesome you are" or "I hope you realize how valuable you are to the operation" canned responses that, although it was nice to hear, it lost its luster eventually. I ended up replying every time he'd do this with a motion of opening a beer can accompanied with a verbal "psshtt" sound and adding in a "thanks for the can of praise." It was meant in jest and he took it in stride and understood it wasn't meant with any malice. I was just poking a little fun at the observations he was making.
The point is, when you do it to too many people, too often, and for doing nothing but what's expected of them, it starts to ring hollow eventually.
Anecdotal: I observed something about myself which I found peculiar. A friend of a friend on Facebook, whom I observe to have quite intelligent DH4+ responses to comments even if the masses usually come back with a DH0 or DH1 response. I found myself observing his responses to other folks' comments and throwing in my own $.02. I discovered that the quality of my responses was greatly elevated when replying to him, clearly attempting to engage him at his level. This was sometimes rewarded with a 'like' from him, and sometimes not. When receiving a 'like' it resulted in a physiological response from me akin to a very light drug high.
My apologies. Yes, that's the correct reference. I learned about Paul Graham via several HN posts years ago and his explanation isn't unnecessarily complicated so I figured his work was widely known/understood.
P.S. when I put "dh0 response" into Google, the first link is Paul Graham's How to Disagree
Your Google-fu is better than mine. I tried "DH0", then "DH0 DH1", "dh disagreement", "dh levels", and it wasn't until "dh0 dh1 levels" that I got my answer. :)
They may be indistinguishable but common sense still applies when asking for clarification. For example, I work with folks of a certain intellect where I have to ask very specific and pointed questions that do not contain substantial detail in each question in order to clarify something or to get an answer I need.
When that conversation happened, it should have ended with, "just to clarify, I should, or should not, use organic cat litter?" That would have cleared it up.
Furthermore, “It would have been much clearer if they had said an inorganic zeolite sorbent,” Hobbs says.
Wouldn't one argue that a better way to explain it would be to specify nonorganic kitty litter since that would clear up any confusion whether written or spoken?
How about not sending a non-expert to the grocery store with a post-it note for supplies when packaging radioactive material for long-term storage. Besides, "organic" when in the grocery store means something completely different any way -- ironically, the organic (wheat-based) product could easily be "non-organic" (meaning not certified to avoid certain pesticides, fertilizers, etc.), while the non-organic (clay-based) product might be labeled "organic" (meaning no pesticides).
Really, how about having a specific written signoff procedure in place, where all supplies must be checked before purchase by a trained expert who knows the difference between organic and inorganic / clay vs wheat, signed off in writing against a checklist developed by experts, then checked again by a separate trained expert when delivered with another signoff, then checked again by a third export when actually used.
> how about having a specific written signoff procedure in place, where all supplies must be checked before purchase by a trained expert who knows the difference between organic and inorganic / clay vs wheat, signed off in writing against a checklist developed by experts, then checked again by a separate trained expert when delivered with another signoff, then checked again by a third export when actually used.
Multiple inspection is a known failure point. A thinks any errors they make will be caught by B and C. B thinks A knows what s/he's doing, and thinks any errors that slip by B will be caught by C. C thinks A and B know what they're doing and so no errors will have reached C.
The boss that recruited A, B, and C to their position pulled the most accurate workers from the shop floor - because you need the inspectors to be better than the shop floor.
Thus quality of product supplied to inspection is reduced; the inspectors are now very busy; and that leads them to shift product through (someone else will catch it; someone else has already caught the problems).
What you need is to give an accurate instruction, and to give people to halt if they're unclear what's meant.
We could call this process "receiving inspection" and have dedicated staff who perform this inspection who follow some type of written "work instruction" to inspect the receipt before approval.
Wouldn't one argue that a better way to explain it would be to specify nonorganic kitty litter since that would clear up any confusion whether written or spoken?
I don't know. Spoken, "a nonorganic" doesn't strike me as clearly better than "an inorganic" at differentiating from "an organic". Perhaps if you knew in advance the qualififications of the intended recipient, but in a safety specification like this, you may not know much about who will be (mis)interpreting the directive. Specifying "an inorganic zeolite sorbent" in the context of nuclear waste may make it more likely that someone who isn't sure about the meaning of one of those terms will seek clarification. By contrast, I'd worry that specifying "nonorganic kitty litter" would increase the chances that someone will just ignore the essential qualifier.
Worse, the word "organic" is overloaded, and means different things to the general public than to chemists. Juxtaposing the chemical meaning with the vernacular "kitty litter" increases the likelihood that someone will misinterpret, especially when "nonorganic" is more commonly associated with marketing and "inorganic" with chemistry. In cases like this where a seemingly innocuous detail is actually of critical importance, it needs to be emphasis and redundancy. The oft-quoted rule of "omit needless words" is more applicable to fiction and journalism than to safety specifications. For something as crucially important as this, I probably would suggest something like "a chemically inorganic sorbent, such as a 'kitty litter' made from zeolite clay".
Just such a linguistic difficulty seems to have played out with "flammable". I remember seeing until a few years back gasoline trucks labeled "INFLAMMABLE". No more.
It seems so obvious to us, especially in hindsight. But I reject the notion that it's so obvious "anyone" would question something like this. If an expert says something directly and you are quite sure they said X and not Y, you are not likely to question it. You heard it from the horses mouth. I think that the speaker should try and emphasize INorganic or say it in a clearer way "non-organic" just to drive the point home.
>the speaker should try and emphasize INorganic or say it in a clearer way
The root problem here is that while the speaker may have been an expert in handling nuclear materials, they were not ALSO an expert in communication. The failure was the presumption that an expert can clearly communicate their domain knowledge across an expertise gap. Communication is a skill unto itself, one that often gets handwaved. People just assume they're good communicators because they can assemble a grammatically correct sentence. My wife is an editor. If I had a nickel for every time she's come home with a story about yet another coworker who claimed they "already edited their own paper and it just needs a quick look-over" and then handed her an incomprehensible mess, I'd have a lot of nickels.
One of my favorite movies, Miracle about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team that upset the Soviets, had this dialogue that actually happened between Head Coach Herb Brooks and Assistant Head Coach Craig Patrick. I feel it applies here.
Patrick: This is the final roster? You're kidding me, right? You're missing some of the best players.
Brooks: I'm not looking for the best players, Craig. I'm looking for the right ones.
I think the real lesson - and the premise behind Moneyball - is that when you have a complex objective, you can't evaluate people in a vacuum. You have to optimize at the team level. You can try your damnedest to come up with heuristics and metrics to evaluate individuals, but if you don't allow yourself to consider the context that they'll be working in, you'll miss a lot of potential.
I don't think this is the central thesis of Moneyball. I'm a huge baseball nerd, including on-field and statistical side. The idea behind the WAR (Wins Above Replacement) stat is that you should adjust for context, then evaluate players in that vacuum.
Moneyball was about identifying and exploiting market inefficiencies. It actually rejects the team level optimization ("he's a team player" is explicitly rejected as a valuation of a player).
Instead, Billy Beane identified what components led to team success, then found which of those the market doesn't pay for. Then he got those guys.
Used to be thought that a good baseball team had a speedy leadoff hitter. Teams would play objectively worse players because they thought their style better "fit" their role.
Moneyball was the start of the revolution that you just want to get the best players. Then accept that playoffs don't really mean anything other than randomness with small sample sizes.
Agreed. It's also worth observing for those who might not really be baseball fans that baseball is really less of a team sport than most major sports. Yes, team dynamics can reach toxic levels and sometimes teams seem to outperform their individual roster members. But other than some degree of matching players with positions (pitchers in particular), you mostly want players who would be best/best value on key stats under any coach or any team.
The entire offensive side of the game pretty clearly violates the notion of independence. In particular, the value of a batter with particular stats is dependent on the batters that come before and after him. This is the reasoning behind stacking people with high on base percentages in front of sluggers. If it were not a team sport, you'd see no clear patterns in line-up. This applies at the team selection level as well. For instance, a player who can draw a lot of walks is worth different amounts to different teams depending on their ability to convert those into runs.
The fact that saving a run is nearly equivalent to scoring a run means it bleeds over into the defensive side as well. A phenomenal batter with a high error rate may be of enormous value to one team since their pitching staff strikes out more batters than average while being a terrible addition to another team.
If you're still unconvinced, I could throw together some simulations later that might make this clearer.
"In particular, the value of a batter with particular stats is dependent on the batters that come before and after him. This is the reasoning behind stacking people with high on base percentages in front of sluggers."
This is the older, common wisdom that has essentially been refuted by modern analytics (SABRmetrics, if you will).
Team-dependent statistics like R + RBI (and pitcher ERA!) are dependent on the performance of the rest of the team. They also correlate much less with a team winning games than other stats, like OBP.
That's one of the central theses of Moneyball and the SABR movement: it's better to ignore stats like (pitcher) Wins, RBI, and R, because they measure the teammates contribution more than the player you're tryign to measure.
One popular advanced pitching statistic is literally named Fielding Independent Pitching, and is calculated using only BB, K, and HR. This tracks more with contributions to a team winning than stats that include fielding skill, randomness, sequencing, etc.
What you described for a good hit / bad field team does work around the edges, but these effects are not very strong. The latest research suggests the biggest impact might be matching your pitching staff tendencies with fielders; if you have a flyball heavy staff, invest in better OF defense (Mariners, 2017). If you have worm burners (Houston, esp w/ Keuchel), invest in your IF defense.
The goal of the modern stat movement is to evaluate a player independent of team context using statistics that do not depend on their teammates. This is because estimating a players "true talent level" is much more useful than evaluating RBI.
It seems like we're more or less in agreement...Team performance and individual performance are interdependent, particularly in naive statistics like the ones you've mentioned are traditionally used. You're talking about making team-independent estimations of player value. That's completely valid. What I'm also saying is that in a similar vein, when you are considering how a player's addition will impact a team, you need to correct for his interaction with the team as well.
Yes, agreement! Thank you for nudging me to recognize that.
However, the studies I've seen (regular Fangraphs and BP reader) suggest these interactions between player skill sets is minimal, if such an effect can be shown.
Take lineup position. It's been studied ad nauseam, by some of the brightest in the field. Turns out, lineup order, over the course of a season, doesn't really matter that much. An intentionally suboptimal lineup underperforms an "optimized" one by maybe a couple wins per year. Almost all lineups actually implemented are more like fractions of a win, which is generally within error bars.
By and large, baseball is a game where you just assemble the best talent and they will win. (This is in regard to on field talent; I do not believe "clubhouse culture fit" is as silly as in the tech world, and is usually retroactively defined.)
This kind of reasoning go only so far. While you are technically correct, the difference that something like batting order makes is marginal in the long run. The advantage of a fully optimized vs. a totally random batting order would equate to approximately 1-2 additional win(s) over the span of a full 162 game season.
That being said... one win can be the difference between a playoff spot or not, so it clearly does matter. I'm just trying to emphasize that the teamwork aspect of the offense is minimal, as a lineup of hitters with solid statistics is more important than the order in which they bat.
However, the defensive side of things is much more tricky to measure. Baseball statistics still have a difficult time calculating the value (for better or worse) of a player's defense and nobody is arguing that it doesn't significantly affect a team's performance.
That's fair enough. Although I'd argue that it's more a case of assembling an appropriate portfolio than it is a "team" in the way that people normally use that term.
(I'd also argue that overall offensive ability trumps a lot of optimization around base stealing or the type of hits.)
ADDED: i.e. I'd argue that if populating a roster with about a half dozen All Star sluggers were financially viable, I'd argue that would probably be a pretty effective team however unbalanced.
As covered in Moneyball (the book), the "sluggers" tend to swing at more. So although they may hit home runs, they also tend to strike out a lot too.
The actual approach was to get a bunch of people who worked to extend the inning by not getting out.. aka getting on base safely. You don't need many big hits when you can get singles and doubles consistently.
A couple years ago, I met a small scale angel investment group that complained "we haven't had a unicorn" but when we chatted more, I found out 60% of their investments were acquired in under five years with them making ~5x each time.
Not as sexy but sounds like a good strategy to me.
True, only if you have a great team already and you don't desire messing it up. If that is the case, you wouldn't need that method at the first place.
On the other hand, teams are pretty dynamic these days given the interfaces and responsibilities are well defined. Or at least are largely defined well. So replacing team members is never really a problem.
If you have a team of 6, sometimes the best individual 6 people are not the same group of 6 that you put out there to solve a problem.
Let's continue to use hockey as an example, because I love ill-fitting sports analogies and I also love hockey. For sure, we already know we need 3 forwards, 2 defensemen and a goalie, so for the sake of argument, even if your 6th best skater is Wayne Gretzky, he's going to sit because you need to put Neuvirth in goal (to pick on my own team for a second). But let's think about forward lines only for just a second. Pittsburgh has Crosby and Malkin centering different lines, even though they're the best two guys on the entire team - they do the same job, they're playmakers first, goal scorers second (even though Crosby is the league's top goal scorer). Washington has Ovechkin playing the wing with Backstrom, because even though he's their best player, his job is to take a pass and fill the net.
That's a really long-winded way for me to say that "best" has a situational component, and teams have compositional elements that often involve roles. The 10 best people at that level in the company may all fill the same role, but on a team of 6, maybe there's only 3 of that role, and the other 3 are complementary parts. Best is situational.
Gretzky is great example because he was not the best player because he scored the most. He was the best because just him being on the ice lead to others scoring as well. Just being out there he was able to help the rest of the team score as well. Contrast this with a player like Kobe Bryant who was a great individual player but horrible team player. Kobe did not get along with his team mates and other than the points he put up on the board Kobe did not really contribute much to the Lakers. Kobe was such a ball hog that they refer to a missed shot that is rebounded and scored by the offense as a kobe assist because it was only way he was going to give up the ball
But he played ball for 20 years. I think average number of assists per game is a better stat here, where he was ranked 136th according to this link [1].
There have been over 3000 people to play in the NBA. Ranking 136th still makes him better than the vast majority of people to have ever played the game. Especially as a two guard on a team that primarily ran the triangle, an offensive system that devalues traditional pick/roll dribble creation and generates most of it points on secondary actions (eg hockey assists) off high post play.
When people either can't or don't want to measure the performance of who they picked and who they didn't, they resort to stories that sound good. Even if you have "rigor" around how you score candidates, if you don't connect those scores to subsequent performance it's all still just a narrative.
There is so much statistical noise in any short series of 5 to 7 events that any coach whom thinks they have some magical eye at picking the "right" players is simply delusional.
Yes it worked out for Brooks this time and god-bless-his-success, but really...the whole idea behind Moneyball is that people totally suck at it.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23538771