kovac

Researchers find that there are people who have not bought any clothes in a decade. Then attribute it to "Greta effect" which is, what less than a year old? We would have been so lost without Greta.

Did you know your lifestyle is now known as "Greta effect" :p

It's harder to specialise, takes more effort. Being a generalist is easier specially if you are charismatic. When we try to measure a correlation between success and specialisation, how good one is at it and its value to the economy is an important factor.

Take software for example. There are highly specialised software that costs a lot for a licence while general software like an office suite goes for 5 bucks a month...

I think it's the social aspect of it. There are people who feel lonely at home and really need some people around them most of the time. I enjoy wfh usually. It just takes overall less energy since no commute, can take a nap if I'm tired and catch up to it later if I'm really tired or take a quick cold shower in the middle of the day, step outside to a nice coffeeshop for an afternoon tea. I'm an engineer, so I usually enjoy the actual quiet in my room when I'm working. For some, having people around them is more important than the freedom, flexibility and relaxation they can get at home. Too bad :)

Genuinely inventing something, specially nowadays is very difficult. If a number of students start having those (especially if many of them do after an internship at IBM), it can become kind of a red flag.

Also, after talking with someone who had obtained a few patents (his work did not nearly reflect the calibre of an inventor), the expensive and convoluted process of filing for a patent means that the uniqueness of an invention may not be the most critical factor when obtaining one. I observed this when I worked at some companies hwo actively discouraged patenting because they had no resources to maintain and defend patents.

It's going to be a little tricky to define "safe" once everything goes online. Internet is getting more and more governed by a few different players. "Less likely to ... track everything" hmm.

When I was in university I took psychology modules out of interest and crashed lectures out of curiosity. Im inclined to agree with you. Coming from a pure mathematics background, I felt that their methodology of studying sonething as complex as the human mind and the underlying assumptions rather unqualified, lacks attention to details and a sense of rigour. This opinion and (the OP's remarks) aren't going to be popular here, but this was my observation as I was sitting down in lecture theatres listening to psychologists and their models and how they arrived at them and how they applied them.

Fields like neuroscience and behavioural economics are far better in their approach to understanding how we think. I'm glad you found some measure of comfort in meditation and that you recovered. It takes immense strength to fight an enemy within.

I'm a software engineer who majored in Mathematics in University. You don't need that level of mathematics to become a software engineer.

You do need basic mathematics (like secondary school or O/L) to know basic arithmetic operations, remainders and modulo operations, binary numbers and some basic low order logic like for OR, And, stuff. Having a solid high school level mathematics would be an advantage.

In terms of state of mind when I did maths vs programming, programming is more akin to solving IQ puzzles or school math problems that are computational in nature(perhaps a little easier?) more than doing university maths.

Where I did feel an advantage having done advanced maths is in fields like encryption (you learn this stuff in full general forms in abstract algebra, coding theory in high level math), abstractions (software engineering abstractions like programming interfaces, classes are a piece of cake compared mathematical abstractions), certain algorithms.

Short answer is actual mathematics is less important than the ability to grasp abstractions and think in a disciplined, qualified way (like in maths how you go from axiom to axiom, or theorem to theorem qualifying each step). If you don't have a previous maths background you can learn it on the job as long as you have the above raw skills. If you don't enjoy that kind of thinking, I'm not sure if you'll enjoy certain subfields of software engineering though you could still go into UI programming. Either way, if I didn't have a chance to learn maths even at a primary school level, I wouldn't have let it prevent me from trying to be a software engineer.

I don't know, I feel like designing a system to prevent a pilot from lifting nose too high up seems to make more sense than a system that actively pushes the nose down after it being lifted. If nothing else, passengers would feel a bit of a discomfort of a sudden nose down movement. Not sure if I missed something in the current design.

The official report just came out. On what grounds would the existing administration just fire upper level management at an early stage?

The appropriate response would be to force FAA to ground the planes (if and which FAA did not do themselves), and wait for the official report and then open an investigation in to Boeing and FAA. Time is a factor to take into account.