In adult language learning, practicing pronunciation early is far, far easier than fixing it later. Correcting bad pronunciation habits is extremely hard once engrained, but learning it the right way early isn't as hard as people think. Most courses don't focus on this enough IMO, resulting in people with hard-to-understand accents, which makes them feel less confident when practicing speech as they're asked to keep repeating themselves.
Around five years ago, I had to learn a new language because I moved country. I've learned several languages before and so I got good at it quite quickly, and I think my pronunciation in general is quite decent, but you can notice the words I learned very early, because I have a habit of pronouncing them with the wrong stress or vowel quality. It's hard to break those habits once you've formed them.
EA isn't limited to utilitarianism. A very substantial amount of people in EA would not consider themselves utilitarians. And of those who do, it's very rare to find a "pure" utilitarian with no deontological bent and thus willing to engage in fraud.
Even if you find a "pure" utilitarian (which is rare), it's considered "naive utilitarianism" to ignore the long-term and broad effects of creating harm, and it's also considered intellectually arrogant to think you know enough about the impacts of your decisions and moral philosophy that you can justify causing definite short-term harm for potential long-term gain against the moral frameworks of just about everyone else.
On the whole, I can't personally think of any one person involved in EA, or widely-read EA literature, that promote or support that type of thinking.
> suburbs are perfectly walkable anywhere in the northeast. Cities less so due to crime
This isn't true. I've lived in and visited plenty of northeastern suburbs and cities. The suburbs are largely not walkable: no sidewalk, long distances, and as a result basically nobody walks to any shop. The cities are walkable and with a large amount of residents actually walking.
I don't know where you lived, but everywhere around Philadelphia/NYC/Boston had sidewalks unless you were way out in the sticks. I lived within a 10 minute walk to the closest supermarket, and 5 minutes to the closest Wawa. You'd see people jogging and walking their dogs at all hours of the day. Conversely, in North Philadelphia the general advice was to stay off the streets after dark unless you were in a car.
Curious, does this apply to romantic partners too? Personally, I'd be sad if my wife didn't share things troubling her that she didn't need my help solving. I like knowing how she's feeling about things.
But at work, I understand this mindset. Though personally, I still actually don't mind hearing people complain. And since I'm a manager, complaints are a very useful signal for me: even if I'm just in listening-mode, they give me more clarity on precisely what's going on in my team.
Of course I don't callously dismiss my romantic partner when she complains. We both also recognize that complaining is fundamentally indulgent, pointless, and selfish, and strive to develop better coping mechanisms. Even when suffering greatly, I am loathe to complain. When I do complain, I am sure to apologize.
As a leader, actionable complaints (read: criticisms) are indeed a very useful signal, and I try my best to pay attention to them.
Do you always feel a need to apologize when indulging in something that makes you feel better? Why is it that you feel you're not entitled to do something selfish that makes you feel better and doesn't hurt anyone else?
If this is actually true then clearly there's no need to apologize. However if I've selfishly imposed a one-sided conversation on someone else in order to soothe myself, of course it's correct to apologize. Who enjoys participating in a one-sided conversation? Most people tolerate them out of sheer politeness.
The whole idea of good manners is to avoid imposing on other people, be that physically, emotionally, or conversationally.
> Most people tolerate them out of sheer politeness
You are projecting. Some people are flattered to be a trusted confidante or emotional support, and glad to be able to help someone they care about. This is situational and dependent on factors (if someone's emotionally leaning on me every second of every day, it's going to get tiring pretty quickly), but even if the experience of the conversation _itself_ isn't exactly pleasant it might still be considered a worthwhile discomfort to go through for the emotional closeness generated (as a parallel - physically exercising isn't (often) pleasant, but the sensation afterwards and the physical well-being generated are considered worthwhile, so the activity is net-desirable even if it's unpleasant in-the-moment). In fact, apologizing for the act might insult the listener, implying that your relationship isn't strong enough to warrant such sharing. Further, the listener might care about the speaker's mood and state of mind so much that, even if the experience is net-negative _for them_, they're still glad to be able to provide that support to someone they love.
This is all subjective - you and your partner might so dislike being vented to, or feel such negligible positive effects from it, that the calculus ends up negative and an apology _is_ genuinely warranted. But it's not necessarily true for all (or even, I'd guess, most) people. You're right that avoiding imposition is good manners, but it is not necessarily the case that sharing feelings with someone is an imposition on them.
Leaning on someone for emotional support unprompted is an imposition, just like relying on someone for financial support. Yes in some cases the imposition is welcome, and fosters closeness and interdependence, but in most cases it is better to be self-sufficient (emotionally and financially).
You'd surely apologize when asking even the closest friend for financial support, why not when asking (or worse, demanding) emotional support?
Layoffs do sometimes happen this way. I was an EM at a company with layoffs where line managers were not told at all about layoffs or included in deciding who to lay off: all discussions happened at the director level and up.
That's what the article is arguing for -- delay school start by 1 year for boys, which they call "redshirting." Key argument is towards the end:
> One striking study, by Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of Northwestern and Elizabeth Cascio of Dartmouth College, drew on data from Tennessee to study the impact of a delayed school start. The children in their sample were allocated randomly into different classrooms. Overall, Schanzenbach and Cascio found that being a year older had a positive impact on eighth-grade test scores, reduced the risks of repeating a grade before high school, and improved the chances of taking the SAT or ACT. The benefits for boys were at least twice as big as for girls on all measures through eighth grade. By high school, only boys were seeing any gains.
> Lastly, they found that the younger classmates of redshirted children suffered no negative consequences. If anything, they wrote, there were modestly positive spillover effects. That’s one reason to believe that girls would only be helped by this shift—having more mature boys in classrooms would likely improve the learning environment.
> Cascio and Schanzenbach’s research is the most robust to date, but their findings have been confirmed by a number of other studies. And related research has shown that redshirted boys are happier, too.
It's unclear to me if these are helpful markers. I mean, in a vacuum eighth grade stats are nice. But don't we want functioning adults? I was one of the youngest in my class, in hindsight should have skipped a grade, but I will would have probably done better in eighth grade had I waited a year.
It's interesting, I think the takeaway is probably that overall we need to make it easier for people to time shift their grades up or down. Like maybe people should be graduating high school between 16 and 20 more frequently, instead of tightly grouped around 18.
Why not both? Work is ~40hrs a week, so it's nicer if you have the option to enjoy it. There are other software jobs with similar pay to Google, but with more rewarding work. Win-win to switch, if that's what you're looking for.
Personally, the type of problems I solve at work are more interesting than I could realistically come up with and work on on my own. Ymmv.
