Define 'hospitalized'. I think two realities are being discussed under the same term.
The way I see it, hospitalized can mean: I have great insurance and I went into the hospital for treatment because I felt some symptoms. I was feeling 80% well when I went in, I was only there because the doctors wanted to be thorough and check my vitals overnight.
It can also mean: I don't have insurance and I waited until I was half past dead to go to the hospital because I have bad/no insurance. By the time I got to the hospital I couldn't even breath. I went straight to the ICU.
Both are 'hospitalized'. But I don't think the two examples represent the same reality. I'd imagine Remdesivir working very well on the first and not very well on the second due to viral load concerns mentioned in other parts of the commentary to this article.
I don't have a lot of experience with hospitals, but what I do have (via relative with life-threatening heart issues, including most recently a pacemaker) says that "I was feeling 80% well when I went in, I was only there because the doctors wanted to be thorough and check my vitals overnight" isn't normal. It seemed more like "hmm, you're not dying, go home" was the general rule. And not unreasonable, either; unless you need to be in a hospital, you probably shouldn't be. Never felt like we were getting pushed out, but they definitely encouraged us to go home. Excellent insurance, so that wasn't the issue, and there were several multi-day stays, including post-surgery. Pre-covid (but within the last three years), so space wasn't an issue either. [And the person's doing great now. +1 modern medicine.]
If it was only about environmental reasons, wouldn't they just make it optional?
As in, they could include a checkbox (that is unchecked by default) to get these items free in the checkout process. They already ask a million customization questions, why not make this one?
I'd also think that for the percentage of people who need the charger/earbuds, having to make a second purchase on amazon will overall increase the carbon footprint for that person, since two packages shipped are way more inefficient than one. This undermines their argument and seems like it makes them depend on externalities to make their ecological calculations work out.
Optional makes the supply chain worse by having to make two types of box, two production lines. Or by adding them separately you end up with more packaging material and more transport expense. This is a good move for the environment, even it doesn’t feel like it given the vast resources it must take to make the phone anyway.
I've been involved in the production of physical goods. You are right there's an increase in cost, although then the question becomes by how much.
There's the option to make the same packaging but one having an empty space where another has that space filled with these items.
Even if they had to make two separate boxes, I'd like to think that given Apple's volume, the additional costs in managing SKUs and packaging production wouldn't have too big of a hit on overall production costs. Especially when offsetting the decrease in cost of goods provided. I however don't know their numbers enough to knowledgeably argue this point. Though overall my point I think still stands regardless of the exact dollar amounts being discussed, I can't see those amounts being too serious an inpact on overall costs.
Not only do I 100% agree with you, but I actually think there's a good probability it was done on purpose and then capitalized on brilliantly. That onion image jumps at me.
I must give them a tip of the hat, they know how to play the media game:
> "We've sold more in the last three days than in the last five years," said Mr McLean, adding they are also now listed under "sexy onions" on the company website.
I find it interesting that when I was growing up, the person who invented the typing notification feature would have presented it as an achievement.
Now these articles start with him taking the 'blame'.
It feels so... like a new world... where most people are offended and angry by every tiny little annoyance of modern life. Where being angry and pessimistic is almost fashionable. Complaining about life, feeling hopeless, prophesizing disaster and externalizing problems is something people do to 'brag'.
I feel schools should include a decent amount of volunteering with people who have real problems. Maybe that way the next generation won't be so quick to focus on the negative. We're living in the best of times by all objective measurements.
And that the one after was the worst. Moaning about the youth today goes back to at least the ancient Greeks.
Moaning about the one before is also popular. I have a pet theory that the reason that we hear so much about the offences of the boomers and millennials is that leadership positions are mostly gen x right now (when did you last hear anything about gen x?) In a couple of decades everyone will be complaining about gen x and gen z, instead.
75%-80% open rate for many of my campaigns tells me the title is misleading, those pixels are firing in all the major providers.
Putting people in email/SMS funnels based on which emails they read is ENOURMOUSLY beneficial to my clients.
This is something that's really very basic.
Client Sells Widgets. He sends 3 emails to email base on small widgets, green widgets and cheap widgets.
If the client opens one of these but not the other, does it not make sense to send further information that is relevant to their interest? I mean, if they open the green widgets email on my funnel, they will be getting A LOT MORE green widget emails because they will be moved from funnel to funnel based on their activity or lack thereof.
Good email tracking is part of good marketing. Something I do see commonly is tech founders looking down on marketing. This leads to low budgets and attracting low quality candidates. Modern marketing tools are like machine guns. And most marketing people are like chimps. So that's why you see silly emails like 'I see you are opening my email, why don't you answer' - which is insane from a marketing point of view, why creep people out? So silly.
Good open rate data gathering results in you not knowing that it's being tracked. You simply get more targeted stuff and less stuff that is outside your interest.
Back in 01 when I started in digital marketing, good attribution of sales and marketing was something people spent 7 digits creating custom solutions. Now we can string a few SAAS providers together and get amazing details. It just needs to be set up intelligently.
Having said all of this: of course I don't allow images to display by default on my email provider. But I'm privacy minded and most people aren't. Which is fine, the world is diverse and that's a good thing. I love choice.
> Good open rate data gathering results in you not knowing that it's being tracked
At some level you know that people react badly when they know they're being tracked, so it's important to help ensure they are not aware of the tracking.
> Having said all of this: of course I don't allow images to display by default on my email provider. But I'm privacy minded and most people aren't. Which is fine, the world is diverse and that's a good thing. I love choice.
You don't like being tracked. You make a living tracking others, or helping others to do so. You think it's important to not let people discover that they're being tracked. Then you rationalize it as people making the "choice" to be tracked.
There may be an internally consistent case to be made that this is above board and ethical, but you haven't made it.
> The reason I don't mention "I see you are opening my emails" is because it makes people uncomfortable.
Oh, you're so close.
Why does it make them uncomfortable when you mention it?
----
> How dare you sir levy false accusations against me. I NEVER said that. Please don't spread lies about me.
Two comments ago:
> So that's why you see silly emails like 'I see you are opening my email, why don't you answer' - which is insane from a marketing point of view, why creep people out? So silly. Good open rate data gathering results in you not knowing that it's being tracked.
not let people discover that they're being tracked. != not actively disclosing.
One is actively hiding. The other is not actively revealing. The fact that you are pretending they are the same makes me feel you aren't arguing in good faith. You are intelligent enough to understand this without me having to highlight it, twice.
You are similarly intelligent enough to understand that the actual person reading your email doesn't care about the distinction you're making.
If you go to someone and say, "don't worry, I didn't deceive you, I just profited off of your already existing ignorance", they're not going to be happy with that answer. Either you have their informed consent, or you don't.
To repeat, why does it make your customers uncomfortable to discover that they're being tracked?
> The disclosure is there and Snowden made sure no one can declare themselves uninformed.
I don't think I need to offer additional commentary on that claim, I think it kind of speaks for itself.
> I'm not a big player, I don't make the rules, I play within them. Don't like the rules? Work on getting them changed. Don't like my funnels? Don't sign up.
But at least on this one point, both of us seem to be completely agreed.
The advertising industry is incapable of self-regulation, and there's no point in companies like Apple, Mozilla, DuckDuckGo, or Fastmail having a 'dialog' over blocking 3rd-party cookies, auto-denying permission prompts, blocking device IDs, and caching assets serverside in emails.
They just need to push their privacy changes and stop pretending that the advertising industry is interested in holding itself to a responsible standard. There is no realistic scenario where tracking mechanisms are left open and marketers commit to only using them responsibly.
This was Apple's mistake a few weeks ago with device IDs, where they backpedaled just because Facebook was angry. Platforms can't negotiate with advertisers, they just have to change the rules and let them complain.
Ultimately, the conversation we've had here hasn't boiled down to some kind of philosophical disagreement about the nature of privacy or how different concerns should be balanced, your position is just that you're going to do anything you're legally allowed to do, and if anyone feels violated by that, it's their fault for not stopping you.
That's not a philosophy that's worth negotiating or debating with.
The problem is consent. People think of email like regular mail. They don't understand that you're able to track them every time they open a message. The reason people are creeped out by "I see you are opening my email" is because the tracking itself is unexpected and unwanted.
I support organizations like EPIC and EFF. I tell people all the time in my life to support causes like these and get made fun of.
> The reason people are creeped out by "I see you are opening my email" is because the tracking itself is unexpected and unwanted
Yes, but there's no reason to be, tracking is well known for anyone who wants to know it. A google search is not a high barrier to obtaining information. And it's not my clients obligation to inform the public. You can make a case that schools should teach this. That public officials should spread it. That non profits promote it. That the media should mention it more.
To argue that my client producing widgets is not disclosing it further than they already do in the Privacy policy, in the disclaimers in emails and in their terms and conditions... is IMO unreasonable.
The reason I don't mention "I see you are opening my emails" is because it makes people uncomfortable. Which is why this topic isn't in the news. To blame a small business owner producing quality widgets and their marketing guys for the society we create jointly is immature at best.
I do my part on my dime and my time. I'm not going to feel guilty or apologize for providing value to businesses that provide value. I live and work within the constrains of the real world and actively try to make those constrains better. I don't think it's reasonable to expect more of people.
> So you do acknowledge that it is creepy and undesired, and your solution instead of not doing it is just to not mention it but do it anyway. Classy
My solution is to use standard industry practices while supporting non profits and politics that improve the overall ecosystem.
It's what adults do. But I guess attacking strangers on the internet is where true class comes from?
> We're not doing that jointly buddy. You are the one doing it and you only get away with it by trying to hide it as you mentioned just above.
The only reason I'm doing it is because it's industry standard practice and it works. You can't bring a knife to a gun fight. Acting like that can happen just shows me you aren't well engaged with the real world. Insinuating my small business clients should not segment email audiences while their competitors do it is just unrealistic and disconnected from how the world operates.
Real world people who actually care about privacy and not grandstanding or throwing rocks in an effort to virtue signal... they actually sign up at EPIC and EFF and contact senators and congressman about specific privacy legislation. At least that's what I do to improve the situation. What do you do that I should be doing to improve our situation in relationship to privacy?
What if I don’t think Mr. Marketer has a god given right to help me receive more relevant emails, and I would like a way to indicate that preference to my mail client which downloads emails on my behalf from a mail server I pay good money for? How does the current email tracking infrastructure facilitate this preference? What actual choice do users have in this matter today?
Until we actually figure out these questions outside of layering hacks (i.e. “block image subresources entirely”), it seems like we should definitely put a pause on the whole effort.
You're missing the point. Tracking gives you numbers, but they are not accurate numbers. Your clients think they're beneficial because they don't know the numbers aren't accurate. Building funnels on top of bad data is not impressive.
All data is inaccurate to some degree. This is not new.
There are ways to mitigate false positives, and many of the best SAAS work tirelessly to constantly incorporate every new update and every new technique to try and correct data to make it as clean as possible. The techniques are many and I'm generally not on the cutting edge of that particular niche. But I know people who are.
And it only has to be accurate enough to be profitable.
If I get it right 80% of the time and increase CLV by 30% while increasing marketing costs by a small amount, that's an objective win.
We're not sending people to Mars. And even then, every measurement has a margin of error. It's the inherent nature of measurements.
You don’t actually ever have anything close to that. The big marketing automation platforms apply “correction factors” because most mail clients block images by default.
Create a seed list of 100 emails you control, make sure you open exactly one of your test emails, and watch your “marketing automation” tool lie to you when it comes to open rates.
> Too often I have been told to be proud of the great work I am a part of, as if this should outweigh the negative and harmful things myself and others have experienced.
Actually, that's how it works in the real world from my experience.
Most geniuses have terrible shadows that are as dark and long as they are brilliant and tall.
Most of us feel really lucky to get things done and be a part of something, and when we have to bear an unkind comment here or there... well, we're emotionally developed adults who balance the positive with the negative. It takes a lot of entitlement to expect to never hear anything negative or offensive or unkind.*
College should prepare you for the real world, not shelter you from it.
* Obligatory before someone makes a strawman: Of course if the advisor does something illegal, that's another matter, but the article never stated anything illegal being done. Just unkind from what I read.
I am deeply sorry that the sentiment you express has been your experience. That is not the way it is or must be everywhere, and I hope you are treated better in the future.
Even so, I want to say explicitly that the idea that we should allow geniuses to abuse us and harass us because they are geniuses is dangerous and misguided nonsense. Being smart is not an excuse to behave poorly. With rare exception, producing something great for the world, or believing you are working on something great, is not justification for hurting others or not taking into consideration their needs or feelings, especially when they are working for you to try to help you.
I also think that your reduction of 100-hour-minimum work weeks, no free time, emotional manipulation to prevent reporting, and frequent unnecessary cruelty disguised as "advice" or "help" to "unkind comments" is absurd. If people chose this lifestyle, knowing what they were getting into, that's one thing (and even then, it would still be dubious to demand it in the first place) - but clearly the author and their peers were mislead and manipulated into it.
Finally, what is illegal and what is immoral are not the same thing, and we can and should hold people, as a society, to a higher standard than "guess they didn't break the law" when we put them in positions of power over other people.
Edited to add: I had the pleasure of working as an undergrad with several professors and PHD students in a research capacity. Some of these people, I would absolutely consider "geniuses" in terms of both intellect and achievements. I still speak with many of them, and consider some of them good friends. I never, not once, observed or heard of people being treated in the ways described in this article (nor was I myself), despite the relatively prestigious people I worked with and their relatively prestigious work. It is not that way everywhere.
If there was serious abuse I'd 100% agree with you.
One problem we have is the word abuse, based on the modern definition and usage, encompasses a range of activities from things that are only slightly unkind and rather run of the mill to extreme examples of verbal cruelty.
The particular points highlighted in the article don't strike me as being on the cruel side.
My understanding of the world is that the higher you rise, the thicker your skin needs to be.
Of course we shouldn't tolerate gratuitous cruelty.
But anyone who has ever worked with very high level people will know they can be capricious. And for most of us, getting to those high levels is an honor.
Personally in my career I've provided services to successful hard to deal with entrepreneurs. Was it a PITA? Yes. Did I learn a lot? Yes. The most demanding, harsh people are those that test your meddle and forge you in fire. Not the ones that are most pleasant.
The reason elite universities are elite is because they push people to the brink, they are designed to demand as much from a human being as can be demanded. See, my issue with the article has to do with the author wanting to be an elite researcher holding the highest and most elite title (a PHD) in the most elite university in the world (MIT) and not thinking it's going to be a ton of hours a week. IMO, that's how you determine who is elite and committed; by applying stress and seeing who can handle it at the highest level.
I mean, logically the guy who can work 80 hours a week will do more researcher, which will compound, and far outpace the productivity of someone who works 40 hours a week. This seems like a really logical and reasonable basis for how we've set up society and I've yet to meet anyone who is elite in their field who worked only 40 hours a week to get there.
Now, I'll concede: Maybe there was an accusation in that article you consider so gratuitos and bad that it's worth condemning this institution which for better or worse has figured out how to squeeze out human innovation and potential like nothing before in history. I'll also concede I might be jaded and just accepting of things that are changing and should change.
And last, I believe most things should move away from reputation based systems to more meritocratic systems, so if you want to talk about removing the biggest whip that the article mentions (not being able to leave for fear of a bad reference) - I 100% support such efforts.
> Maybe there was an accusation in that article you consider so gratuitos and bad that it's worth condemning this institution which for better or worse has figured out how to squeeze out human innovation and potential like nothing before in history.
1. There is a common fallacy. Just because a system is getting good results (even the best results) doesn't mean that every part of it is well-chosen to contribute to those good results. It's entirely possible that it has bad parts that worsen the results, in spite of which the results manage to be good.
2. Article says: "My advisor was hemorrhaging students, yet no red flags were raised. ... Those who planned to complete their PhD left the group or left MIT."
This sounds like clearly a waste of resources, to have lots of people begin PhD programs and either abandon them or transfer. The phrasing of the paragraph seems to be saying that none of this particular professor's PhD students stayed with him long enough to get their degree—which, if true, means it's not just weeding out the bottom X%, but that it's driving everyone away. And if it's just one professor, that's one thing, but the article says that the administration dismissed all complaints by saying all faculty had their own "methods of advising". Which rings true to an account from a friend of mine:
As a PhD student, he was the "golden boy" of the department, doing very well. After some years, he wanted to get his degree, and said that some of his earlier work should suffice to qualify. His advisor said, no, I insist you keep working on this project, and if you don't, I will not recommend you and will generally prevent you from getting a degree. (I'm hazy on the exact details of what was threatened.) I think it was also impossible to have the other professors in the department recommend him—I think my friend said it was because they weren't willing to oppose the advisor. My friend went to the administration. They said, we believe in academic freedom for our faculty. He said, all right, I believe in suing you. They said, what do you want? He said, I'm not asking for anything outlandish—just bring in a well-regarded professor, a neutral party both sides can agree to, and have him judge. This was arranged, and the professor said, yes, this is worthy of a PhD. My friend got his degree, and left the university system permanently after that.
> My advisor was hemorrhaging students, yet no red flags were raised. ... Those who planned to complete their PhD left the group or left MIT.
This literally tells me nothing.
What's the average completion rate in that field? What's it for other great professors?
"hemorrhaging", like "abuse" is very vague language. I don't like condemning people based on this. It seems like a slippery slope.
Again, if you can point out a particular accusation in that article you feel deserves complete condemnation and the type of upheaval we are seeing, please point it out. I'd like to learn.
Otherwise, I'll continue to see this as a failed Navy Seal complaining about how tough it is to become a Navy Seal without understanding that the difficulty is built into the concept of why it's elite. If it was easy, there'd be no status associated to it.
No one "expects" to go through life without hearing insults, but that does not mean they should be tolerated. I fully expect to continue to hear racist, homophobic statements from US politicians. I do not want to, and I want to work to change that.
Sure, the real world sucks. I don't see that as a reason to prevent colleges from improving.
> Sure, the real world sucks. I don't see that as a reason to prevent colleges from improving.
Absolutely. The problem I see is the deterioration of educational quality that seems to correlate with this improvement.
Also, at some point, you need to accept that to be elite, you need to do things that others can't and won't do. A high drop out rate to becoming elite is precisely what defines the elite title being sought.
They already went to college. PhD students are employees doing self guided research that brings in lots of recognition and money to these institutions. They are making little money yet doing work harder than 99.9% of people. They should not be demeaned. There are many work environments that are not like this and we should not pretend like it is the norm. If it is genuinely the norm, the we should work to fix it, not just say 'thats how the world works.' we get to define how the world works. Let's make it less shitty.
100%. For me, Western Capitalism has been doing this my whole life.
When I was growing up, in the little town in Central America that I come from, no one EVER traveled on an aero plane. Now it's normal. It was normal for kids to not have shoes. Now it's unheard of.
I hope we can continue to make the world less shitty.
Also, I hope there's more niceness. I also hope the fight for niceness doesn't make the world truly shitty. There's plenty of historical examples of the fight for what's right leading to what's very wrong.
> You cant expect others to toil away to benefit your "genius"
Brilliant reply. Except... I never said my genius.
The fact that you make up arguments and distort what I said is evidence of the emotive nature of your response. I'll invite you to improve the quality of your discourse. I have respect for people who I disagree with as long as they can show the basic decency of engaging with what I said and not behave dishonestly by making up fake and silly arguments. I really dislike sophism.
You need enough hubris to overcome friction, to dismiss or at least reframe the question, "Surely if this were possible, someone else would have thought of it first, right?"
But you still get one quadrant that's mostly assholes and another that's more reasonable people.
For a given event, the observed population is a factor of the number of distinct occurrences and the duration of each occurrence (eg, why Apple sales numbers are smaller than usage numbers). A kind genius will know when they are beaten, and wrap up the effort. The asshole will persist (increasing duration) and deflect (increasing anecdotes, and the likelihood those anecdotes will be recalled).
Essentially you have not only survivor bias in effect, but also the Availability Heuristic telling you that if it's easier to recall 5 instances of assholes instead of nice people, then there must be a lot more assholes.
Yes, but the question is what are you going to do about it?
I'll tell you what happens in other countries: Cut all the tall poppies down.
I love my new home, America, because she doesn't do this and it happens in my original home country. I love the results of the American system, it's something I'm grateful to live in everyday. Unfortunately I've personally witness that mentality creep in here.
The perniciousness of the go along to get along system is hard to describe to someone who hasn't lived it.
I imagine that this is intentional on the part of the state and the media to deter criminality. If the public message is “crime doesn’t pay” that might deter opportunists.
It is more an intrinsic to being a successful criminal.... if the public knows you are a criminal, so do the police and criminal justice system, since they are part of the public.
How would the government do what you are accusing them of? How would they hide successful drug dealers from the public?
I'm not sure if selling and shipping drugs to end customers was ever a good job to get into. Wholesale drug shipments maybe, but selling to end customers always had way too much risk for the money you could make there.
We shouldn't assume that people go into the business because it's rational to do so. They see the short term gains, not the long term risks.
I might be wrong but I think any criminal who really cared about long term risk adjusted gains stayed away from selling a few pills here and there.
It is actually quite amazing how well drug logistics work. Even in countries with prohibition, you often have no problem getting some weed, I suspect other drugs being similarly well distributed. If have seen weed and other stuff packaged in high tech cases so even dogs couldn't sniff it out.
Especially with the amount of drug use, the logistical challenge isn't trivial.
Condo dweller here with anecdotal confirmation: I would absolutely consider an EV if they had charging stations at my local supermarket. I had looked into one for tax reasons, but passed due to the charging situation.
Not that I paid it much thought, but this does change how I see it. Cheers.
The way I see it, hospitalized can mean: I have great insurance and I went into the hospital for treatment because I felt some symptoms. I was feeling 80% well when I went in, I was only there because the doctors wanted to be thorough and check my vitals overnight.
It can also mean: I don't have insurance and I waited until I was half past dead to go to the hospital because I have bad/no insurance. By the time I got to the hospital I couldn't even breath. I went straight to the ICU.
Both are 'hospitalized'. But I don't think the two examples represent the same reality. I'd imagine Remdesivir working very well on the first and not very well on the second due to viral load concerns mentioned in other parts of the commentary to this article.