insightcheck

Business Insider hired an analytics firm named Numerator to create a report that finds on the average Costco customer [0]. I couldn't find the original data or report in Business Insider's summary, but from its article:

"Numerator found that Costco's typical shopper in the US is an Asian American woman between 35 and 44 years old who is married and living in a city in the Pacific Northwest. (Costco was founded in Seattle and is based in Washington.) She typically has a four-year degree or higher level of education and earns more than $125,000 a year."

I'm not sure whether the income of the "typical shopper" was defined based on a median or mode, so there could well be a large variance of customers with a lower socioeconomic status. A separate article by Investopedia [1] also asserts that Costco mostly opens stores in affluent suburban areas, and originally targeted college-educated and financially wealthier customers.

So, Costco's customers are likely skewed to have a higher socioeconomic status, based on the location of most of its stores in wealthier suburban areas and findings from an analytics report (with some skepticism towards the article about the report, as the raw data and methods weren't shared, as far as I could see).

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-costco-shopper-demog...

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/061516/whats-...

Out of curiosity, could you share some examples of standards that you were prescient to?

SpaceDotBiz is a newsletter about the space industry that has been interesting to read, with a free tier on Substack. A past article that stood out was a Q&A interview with a space industry journalist who moved on to become an industry analyst (2021): https://spacedotbiz.substack.com/p/caleb-henry

Limitations of the newsletter include its lack of criticism and investigative work, as this looks out-of-scope of its focus. Many of the articles have been friendly interviews with people in the space industry, and the most bearish article about the space industry ("Is The Commercial Space Industry Here to Stay?") concluded on an optimistic note.

Other, more critical sources would be welcome to develop a much more complete picture of the industry. I haven't sought out a specialized source for critical space industry articles, though critical articles do appear occasionally in major newspapers (e.g. the Financial Times and The Economist).

Sidney Lumet's film "Network" (1976) explores the idea of "hyperreality" in an accessible way, where people model their lives in reaction to relationships shown on television.

>"I think this is odd, at least if over done, as if the constructed media representation is somehow evidence of anything true"

Constructed media representations, like clips of movies, can still be quite useful for introducing an idea where the evidence will be presented later on. For example, some research psychologists use clips from Ratatouille to introduce concepts about memory.

However, I agree that it's unfortunate that people sometimes do uncritically use fictional depictions as evidence of arguments for human nature. For example, Lord of the Flies depicted a highly pessimistic view of how shipwrecked boys would behave over time, and people have formed a cynical worldview from the story. A real-life case of shipwrecked boys in 1965, however, ended with cooperation: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...

>“There are folk who have domain expertise and have time on hand and are hungry to contribute.”

There are great people willing to share who do exist, though there is a selection bias where experts with certain values and beliefs are far more likely to post than experts with minority views about technical subjects.

From the article on popular beliefs in online communities at the time: “Just because looking down your nose at C++ or Perl is the popular opinion doesn't mean that those languages aren't being used by very smart folks to build amazing, finely crafted software. An appealing theory that gets frantically upvoted may have well-understood but non-obvious drawbacks.”

The view expressed in the article, which I agree with, is that there are experts with minority views on technical topics, who are difficult to find on forums.

>“You have provided examples of domains where charlatans are most likely to operate.”

I agree that you’re unlikely to find these kinds of life advice on technical niche subreddits (like on r/compilers).

However, let’s say a user is a young person looking for life advice. This subject would typically be off-topic on r/compilers and similar forums, so it’s off to more lifestyle-oriented forums (like r/decidingtobebetter or r/selfimprovement).

>“a subreddit that discusses supplements is by it's very nature going to be populated with snake oilsmen selling remedies or doofuses who believe them. Similarly self-help books.”

This isn’t wrong, and there has since been more awareness of paid marketing on subreddit. However, it’s non-obvious to new users, especially young people. If legitimately useful comments get lots of upvotes, there’s an effect where the ones promoting self-help books and supplements seem credible too.

For lifestyle advice in particular, sticking to smaller technical communities may not yield useful discussion. Going to other online communities leads to the problem you’ve described. By process of elimination, it’s viable to start observing and talking with people in real life.

Sure, but there's not enough time to be an expert at everything. Let's say I want to better understand how worried I should be about the US economy.

I could study economics textbooks, take online courses, and get a part-time degree in economics over hundreds of hours, read economics papers from journals and the NBER (and equivalent institutions), develop a reputation and a network of experts, and then develop my own analysis and debate with these experts.

Alternatively, I could accept that I'm a non-expert for this particular domain, read some in-depth analyses in the Financial Times (a better source than Reddit), realize I should be cautious and save more, and move on with my life.

If the subject is more important, e.g. I want to work on a months-long project that requires an understanding of a specific economic concept, it would be useful to search for reputable books related to that topic and then study them.

>"There's people who were weak and gotten strong. Some of them read self help books, some found social support. That's were the focus should be, not on the people who always walked the happy path and just "worked hard". Overcoming hopeless situations, stigma, bias, ego. That's actually hard."

Absolutely. I've also personally benefitted from some self-help books, though I've read many other self-help books that seemed to be useful at the time, but were ultimately forgettable and likely a distraction from issues I would have been better off directly taking of.

A good heuristic I've found is to prefer self-help books written by academics over influencers (anyone with a marketing background or associated with the word "guru"). Good books included those written by BJ Fogg (professor at Stanford) on habits, David Burns on useful versus self-defeating beliefs (psychiatrist and professor also affiliated with Stanford), and to a less extent Cal Newport (computer science professor at Georgetown).

As a side note, Cal Newport's advice was generally good, but — though I may be misremembering — his advice appeared to mostly be useful for people who already have a very clear goal and strong motivation about what to do, and didn't really struggle with self-defeating beliefs, close relationships that were unhealthy in life, or people who had fallen behind in mathematics skill development.

It's clear in hindsight, but a high school student with little life experience who sees a long text post with hundreds of upvotes and a couple awards can be an easy mark.

It's especially difficult because there is actually good advice mixed with the bad and unsubstantiated. I've taken good advice from certain comments (e.g. that led to the discovery of open courseware and actually quality resources on physical exercise programs).

But part of maturity is learning to be skeptical of advice independent of upvotes, so one can get the good advice while avoiding getting mislead. To answer quick questions, I try to search for articles from reputable newspapers first (to see if a verified expert interviewed by a journalist is quoted at length) and possibly HN's archives via Googling with site:news.ycombinator.com. For more complex questions and topics, I try to find book recommendations from Reddit that were written by academics or low-profile experts over influencers, and then reading about the topic at length (e.g. it's usually far better to learn about big social problems if curious through well-sourced books, versus any hot takes online, regardless of the popularity of these hot takes).

Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books.

However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to great institutions like MIT or applied and got into extremely competitive investment banks didn't browse the internet very much, or relied on supplements and these books.

Similar to the ideas expressed in the submitted article, these people didn't spend time online reading blogs and Reddit, or blogging/self-promoting themselves. They generally were involved in a sport (track and field or squash), spent little time online, and spent a lot of time using a lot of paper studying.

They also were careful who they associated with as friends (they hung out with studious people). Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them independently.

Long story short: there is absolutely a culture of improvement that is primarily offline and less visible, because people either don't record it, or people do record it and it doesn't get upvoted or ranked highly on Google searches. Examples of recorded good advice appeared on HN recently, shared by computer scientist Donald Knuth who is also usually offline: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31482116

Absolutely (such as an ongoing trial project in Vancouver, Canada), but it’s not currently not politically realistic in many regions.

In the meantime for the individual, I believe it’s best to sit down and talk to a young person about the risks of drugs in a realistic way. Not the DARE fearmongering stuff, but talking about how drugs can be an easy distraction and source of drama from the things in life that should be higher priorities (e.g. relationships and career). This should also include specific advice about avoiding pills because of fentanyl tainting.

> "while turning a blind eye to the fact that most partying isn't even happening withing student orgs but just from random people throwing big parties in their off campus houses"

This is overall a good argument that Greek parties aren't necessarily unsafe, but I question this reasoning. Would universities have jurisdiction to intervene in off-campus houses?

If not, even if they can't stop all potentially dangerous parties, wouldn't it still be progress to improve safety at alcohol-heavy events where universities can? In the 2020s in the United States, three deaths were related to fraternities due to overconsumption of alcohol, with many other cases in the 2000s to 2010s (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hazing_deaths_in_the_U...). It is plausible that off-campus parties could be more dangerous, but it looks like it's still an ongoing issue at Greek parties too.

Current scrutiny by universities and the media have directly led to Greek societies to want to introduce safety measures to reduce this from happening, and the scrutiny is justified by past deaths.

It varies by social group. Most humanities students I knew were interested in dating, whereas most engineering students I knew were more focused on studying and graduating. But anecdotally, every computer science student I knew was in a relationship, and also every math major I knew. The most technically and academically-accomplished people I knew who were the presidents of design teams were also in relationships. This was in a top-30 university in North America.

So, in my personal experience, I found dating to still be big in university. I think this is rational, as I anticipate it to be harder to find a long-term relationship through online dating in one's early-to-mid twenties, versus dating people knwon in-person.

However, for students anxious about economic opportunities (e.g. due to COVID), I do see the appeal to focus on studies and work experience at the expense of dating.

> "A little past college age now, but even people I know in their late 20s have given up on dating and such."

A major reason is that romantic relationship experience compounds, and so it's difficult to start with relationships later in life. For many people, it's much harder to start a first romantic relationship, than it is to develop subsequent ones. Multiple rejections early on, especially when other people seem to find relationships easy, can lead to reduced self-esteem ("Am I creepy? What is wrong with me?" etc.). It can lead to habits such as having a huge fear of rejection and flirting through physical touch, which leads to a lack of confidence reinforced by further rejection, which further erodes romantic confidence in a negative feedback loop.

Low-quality romantic advice on the internet, such as on Reddit, worsens the problem. Anecdotally, I've found the common, highly-upvoted advice of telling a person "I like you" before you're dating to never once work in my personal experience, while leaning in and pausing while paying attention to social cues to kiss on a date actually led to relationships.

My advice to any guys in their 20s trying to date would be:

1) ignore most internet advice on dating (maybe not this comment, but absolutely avoid incel communities and 4chan),

2) consider an experienced psychotherapist for anxiety if you have rejection anxiety, and

3) try to observe a male friend who is good at relationships who is a moral person, and see what he does (e.g. jokes in a flirty way, and notice how he flirts with touch); if you don't know a friend like this, try to make one (e.g. through a social activity like rock climbing or martial arts).

An essay that thoroughly explores this is called "The Coddling of the American Mind," which was published in The Atlantic in 2015 [1]. The essay presents an argument against the aversion of covering certain points of views in a university course, with the rationale that it might cause emotional harm against students. Another article that shows how student tolerance of opposing views in the US has changed over time was published in Vox [2.]

However, for a diversity of views, a strong counter-argument to the above narrative was published in Times Higher Education [3], which argues that it's quite feasible to teach courses with controversial material, and educators should not be afraid of their students.

These articles include evidence that university student culture has indeed changed, with reports of certain groups of university students being more outspoken about the coverage of certain controversial material in courses. There are arguments for and against about whether or not this change is good for the development of university students as people, but there has certainly been a change in university student culture.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

[2] https://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afrai...

[3] https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/06/09/essay-reject...

On the other extreme end of the scale, consider a young person with lots of potential entering university, who then decides to rebel by trying increasingly harder drugs, and ends up with drugs tainted with fentanyl and dies of an overdose. Similar situations have happened before, such as this report of a physics senior dying of fentanyl [1].

Consider young people who try black hat hacking as a prank or for illicit means, and getting a criminal record (source of this happening in Canada [2]. Students also cheat on their courses, get caught, and get expelled. Others make TikTok videos on train tracks, touch the electrified rail, and end up hospitalized or dead.

This is the extreme end of the scale, but these cases and personal experience have led me to believe that it's typically far better to follow the law while questioning conventions. I admit there are cases (e.g. Uber) where people and companies succeeded by breaking the law, but I figure the risks are pretty high, and there is still plenty of opportunity to innovate while respecting the law in one's personal and professional life.

[1] https://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/june2010/features/drug_po...)

[2] https://globalnews.ca/news/3870338/mcmaster-university-hacke...

For the original source, a mother first told this to CBS News in a video interview: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/mother-who-ran-into-texas-scho...

Online publication "The Root" paraphrased this (source: https://www.theroot.com/uvalde-mom-who-saved-her-children-sa...) as: "Angeli Rose Gomez told CBS News that she was informed that if she continues to talk to media about her fearless actions, she would be charged with a probation violation for obstruction of justice."

A somewhat-recent example of a great novel that was recently discovered was "Stoner" by John Williams, which is about an English professor named William Stoner who stoically lived a seemingly unremarkable life that still evokes sympathy and empathy.

The book was first published in 1965, but failed to gain popularity. It took until 2013 to gain wide popularity, and is a contender as one of the greatest American novels.

Coverage about the book's resurgence was published in The New Yorker (paywalled at https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-greatest-ame...) and The Guardian (no paywall, via https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/13/stoner-john-wi...).

I would say that 3Blue1Brown's educational videos on mathematics will likely be seen as "great works" in the future.

The visualizations and explanations are genuinely highly valuable for people studying mathematics (e.g. his "Essence of Linear Algebra" series [0]). The barrier to creating similar work is also high, due to the amount of time and expertise to create each video.

They also have an artistic quality and a sense of polish that gives the impression that the videos will stand the test of time.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2x...