The great self-esteem con - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/03/quasi-religious-great-self-esteem-con <comment><USER2> Some comments after reading the article and the thread as it stands.

My kids are in their early thirties now and grew up right in the middle of the "self-esteem" boom. We jokingly called the grade school they attended "self- esteem central" and this was back in the late 80s, so we (as parents) were very aware of what was happening at the time.

I think we knew even then that not everything about it felt quite right. My feeling around the absurdity of the 35 trophies for "trying real hard" at the time was that it diminished the very real accomplishment that actually winning something (for real) entailed. AND, the kids were never fooled. They knew exactly who had really won (as others in the thread have mentioned). So like all of these "reactionary" movements (as defined by a sharp deviation from what came before) they tend to pull too far in the other direction.

Most important for me though is the feeling that the movement had the basic idea perfectly right! I think it is hard for non-parents to understand the feeling of helplessness that a parent feels when they send their kids into the mad hopper of public school. You have raised and loved this little being for 5 or so years and now you are sending them to a place where you can mostly only hope that they will not be treated poorly (berated, insulted, hurt physically). So if the self-esteem movement did anything, maybe it raised the bar for the reasonable treatment of kids as fallible human beings that respond better to the carrot than the stick? I think it feels right to me. As parents we are just looking for a safe place for our children to learn stuff. Is it so much to ask that this place actually not suck?

As far as raising children with an eye towards "global competition," the argument can be made that there are diabolical ways involving mind-games, insults and cajoling that will breed more cutthroat competitors and that the adults raised this way are better equipped for the "real world". I say have at it. Parents can make that choice too if they want to. But I didn't want that for my kids, period. Make the "real world" the place you want it to be.

<comment> le-mark I agree with this assessment. People who are vitriolically opposed to 'participation trophies' miss something very basic in my opinion, and that is, participation is optional. Meaning, you have to show up to get the trophy.

This is a subtle distinction I didn't get until raising my own kids. Maybe this is obvious to others, but it was a real "aha" moment to me. To get your kids to act the way you want, you can't just focus on the negative all the time, you have to let them know when they're doing things right. If you just wait for them to screw up then yell at them, you end up doing a lot of yelling, and they're behavior sucks. But when they're sitting at the table eating their dinner, using their fork like they're supposed to, a comment that hey, you're doing a great job right now! really goes a long way in communicating what your expectations are of them.

Before I had kids, if I'd heard this, I would think those parents are pandering and dumb. But it really does work.

<comment><USER3> Then don't lie about what you're praising, make it clear and focused on the actual positive.

If you're going to have a ribbon or something, make sure that it's for seeing the task through, for "being there". Not something to try to artificially rival or nearly match 'being the best'.

<comment><USER4> Like most recreational sports like triathlon and marathon have finishing medals. It feels ok when you get it, but clearly people getting these don't think they are winning anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Haven't finished the article yet, but I already see several red flags as to where they got things wrong:

1\. Self-esteem is a byproduct of self-compassion, not external awards or compliments. External stuff produces other-esteem and yeah, it's the root of narcissism

2\. They tried to produce self-esteem through removing any chance of suffering. Teaching people how to respond to suffering would've been much more productive.

3\. Describing someone to themselves can be unintentionally harmful when judgment or comparison is used, whether it be positive or negative. This article shows how positive judgments (ie. compliments/praise) can be harmful.

If anyone's interested in a functional alternative, I highly recommend the book "Nonviolent Communication."

<comment><USER6> I'm not so sure I buy into that theory of yours any more than the article.

My personal theory is that self-esteem arises from the fact that you are aware of your acceptance in a social group. Knowing that you are welcome calms you and gives that assertive vibe.

I don't think it matters how much you believe in yourself. At least not beyond a basic level. In fact, believing too much in a non-conforming self makes you a narcissist, and believing too much in a conforming self makes you vain.

<comment><USER7> I would agree with this, and also that the 'damage' caused by "Everyone gets a trophy" is overstated immensely. My experience having coached children's basketball was that the consolation and participation prizes did little to nothing to console the children when they lost. Even if they got a ribbon or a tiny participation trophy, it didn't change their sour mood over losing unless the children genuinely weren't that interested in the competition to begin with, in which case I don't really think there's a problem in not being that invested in a competition.

Undeserved praise and adoration does have negative side effects, and it likely isn't the healthiest way to raise children, but the over-emphasis on celebrating participation isn't the society ruining factor people make it out to be. At worst it's probably just a waste of resources and effort.

On the other-hand, parents over-stressing and vicariously experiencing competition through their children is a very real problem, and the behavior of some of the adults I would see at gradeschool basketball games was just shocking, especially given that it was low division schools, so mostly just after-school sports. (i.e., there was no professional path here or proper competition for any child looking to take a chance at professional play someday - it was a bunch of 8 year olds running around the court, most of which couldn't even throw the ball high enough to reach the rim of the lowered basket). To see parents yelling and screaming at their kids to shove and hurt other children in order to win was just ridiculous.

<comment> J-dawg On the subject of "everyone gets a trophy", I can't believe this still happens, because I've only ever heard it described in derisory terms.

I've never heard anyone say "the school gave my kid a 14th place ribbon, how cute!". It's always "can you believe they give out ribbons for 14th place now?!"

Kids are pretty astute at picking up on this stuff, and I expect that being given a 14th place ribbon just feels a little sad and pathetic to a kid.

It probably doesn't do any real harm either, apart from contributing to landfill waste!

<comment><USER8> By contrast, my kids (all <8) are highly motivated to go to swim class on cold days by the ribbons given out—every participant, every class.

<comment><USER9> I wonder how much of this 'debate' is actually just people talking about different age groups?

A participation ribbon might well have motivated me at age 6, and frankly I doubt both the morality and common sense of anyone saying a six year old is too happy at a swim class. Keeping kids involved at that age seems like the biggest goal.

On the other hand, I have annoyed memories of getting participation ribbons at 15 for doing _terribly_ in races. They felt downright insulting, because I knew exactly how I'd done and I was basically getting a ribbon for taking a bus to the meet.

A shocking number of educational issues seem to boil down to "6 year olds are not 15 year olds". That, and "offering things is better than enforcing them" \- participation ribbons are way better than banning score-keeping, which I also got to see.

<comment><USER5> Oh this is a BRILLIANT point! We almost never breakdown our perspectives based on age, much less take a moment to reflect on which of our ages is being represented by a thought.

I think the natural bias to put discrete values on things existing on a spectrum is where is all stems from. "We want to keep things simple, so here's this recipe for self-esteem" as opposed to "here's an age-based breakdown of ways to build self-esteem". Even then, the "enlightened" example is missing loads of other conditions, like if the person suffered emotional abuse or has automatic negative thoughts.

Also, banning score-keeping is the naive approach. I think an interesting one would be to add a game score & encourage both teams to collaborate to increase it. I don't know how it'd effect things, but it'd be fun to find out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think one of the detrimental effects of the positivity movement is, it implies it's wrong and unnecessary to feel bad. Of course, if you feel bad for days on end, there's an ongoing clinical or situational issue. If certain external triggers consistently cause you to feel bad, you can dig deep to find the reason and start to address it.

But to feel bad as a short-lived (hours to a few days) reaction to an event at least partially within your control? Like getting a bad mark? Or screwing up a work project? It's completely normal and similar to the physical pain felt when you touch a burning stove. It's a stimulus "Oh this sucks! I don't want to feel like this again so I'm going to make X, Y or Z change to avoid it."

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's as simple as you state here.

There were exceptions, but when I was in school, people who were getting bad marks were getting a lot of bad marks, and kept getting them. People who got good marks mostly stuck with the good marks. People who were bullied kept getting bullied day in day out.

That's ongoing, but each individual event you would say is "normal". I think it's a question to ask whether getting a bad mark on some test that some people are obviously better suited for than others is actually a moral failing and not a happenstance? Is being a bullying target a moral failing? (I say moral failing because the emotional pain for such events is often of a "I really fundamentally suck" variety)

It seemed much more reminiscent of a system where the attributes of children somehow fell into place and defined how much suffering each of them was going to end up with. I find it difficult to say anything good about this.

Maybe it's the opposite: the side effects of the failure of the self-esteem movement is that we're back to saying suffering is great and builds character, completely ignoring that it's not given out proportionally in the slightest.

<comment><USER12> Penalties do build character, and there's no potential for achieving anything if there's no potential for failing.

We should be teaching kids that they can improve, and show them how good they are with honesty.

<comment><USER9> But - where are the penalties?

My dyslexic friend who got straight Ds in school until he could drop out never saw a penalty, just a steady stream of discouragement. The kids who got bullied got bullied every damn day, usually for reasons they couldn't control.

I agree that the self-esteem bit is frequently absurd - my childhood soccer team wasn't allowed to keep score, but was still expected to practice and 'improve'. But I do worry that no one on either side is actually talking about giving kids opportunities and feedback. They're just adjusting the tone of a zero-opportunity environment.

<comment><USER12> I do agree, kids are not treated well overall. And the positivity trend was an improvement from the overall sadism that existed before.

I just pointed what I think are currently flaws. There are currently no penalties for bad behavior, and no honest assessment of kids abilities. There is also an incredible lack of optimism about the children capacity (they aren't told that they can improve), and (what I didn't post before) a lack of real-word anchoring of expectations - at a minimum, we should tell children that it's actually ok if they don't excel on everything, but they should work to excel on something (and some things are more important than others).

<comment><USER13> Someone once told me that their definition of happiness was setting themselves goals they weren't sure they could reach and then exceeding them.

Kids don't need bullying. They don't need constant reassurance that they are wonderful. They don't need severe abuse when they fail.

But they do need constant challenges which are mostly achievable, with a few that aren't. They also need limits on their behaviour - as long as they're reasonable, fair, adult limits, not capricious authoritarian limits.

I suspect the underlying problem is the emotionally brutal and insanely competitive environment in schools - not just in academics or sports, but in "popularity" and status.

Promoting self-esteem is the wrong answer to that problem. The culture itself has to become more cooperative and less emotionally violent, and that's hard to do when it's a fair reflection of much of the adult culture around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _One manifestation of this has been grade inflation_

Pet peeve: there is no such thing as grade _inflation_ because there is no grade after (or before) A.

What we're witnessing is much worse, it's grade _compression_ where all grades move up with a hard limit.

Inflation wouldn't matter a lot, it would simply make comparisons between periods of time more difficult (we would need to "adjust for inflation").

Compression is much worse because it destroys information, namely, the difference between good and bad works in the same class.

If we had "price compression" in real life, society wouldn't be able to function (everything would cost the same).

<comment><USER15> Should grades reflect absolute knowledge (e.g. if you have this grade then you are that good) or should they reflect relative ordering? With increasing competition, the relative difference of the top should become smaller. That is one factor.

Grades inflation happens because grades and having finished the school once you started now matter more to students then they used to. The techniques they often use (negotiation) are not exactly commendable, but it still had more to do with price and benefits of it then self-esteem and trophies when they were four years. old.

<comment><USER16> > Should grades reflect absolute knowledge (e.g. if you have this grade then > you are that good) or should they reflect relative ordering?

This is a can of worms all by itself, too. Grades can reflect

1) Absolute knowledge, but this unfairly favours students from rich and well- educated parents; 2) Relative superiority compared to your age group, but this encourages children to not help each other because they are afraid they're competing for a limited number of higher grades; 3) Speed of development, which is largely determined by genetics at any given age; 4) Effort, which is unfair to the bright students who have nothing to put their effort in to; or 5) Potential future ability, which is nigh impossible to measure and not necessarily even an important marker of anything.

There are many more options, and neither is obviously right. I don't think any of these really help with the issue mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER17> Option 1) is the right thing to do, only it's hard to accept for people who are prejudiced against having rich and well-educated parents.

Option 2) is also fine on small scale, but makes it harder to compare results between different schools, states, countries.

Options 3 - 5 are just dubious (how would you measure "potential future ability"?)

<comment><USER18> >it's hard to accept for people who are prejudiced against having rich and well-educated parents.

No, it's problematic for people who believe an education system which privileges the rich is a recipe for systemic inequality.

Now personally, I don't think a grading system is the right place to address this inequality, but insisting anyone who does is just "prejudiced against the rich" is facile.

<comment><USER17> Being rich is not a crime (although some social justice warriors try to make it so). Helping your own children get a good education is not a crime also.

I agree that there should be some form of help for the poor, but gaming the grading system is not the way to go.

Whatever you do the children of rich and well-educated will always be in top 5-10% of their class. We shouldn't promote equality by trying to bring them down, instead we should focus on bringing other students up, making the gap between top 5% and bottom 5% percent narrower.

<comment><USER19> Coming from Eastern Europe, I'm having hard time to grasp the "rich&educated" meme.

Over there, rich and educated is barely a poor correlation. In my experience, a lot of rich people kids were stupid and didn't have much academical success. Yet there were folks coming from poor but educated families who did really well. It's anecdata, but in my class it was ~ equal amount of rich-but-stipid and poor-but-smart kids.

The real privilege is parents' attitude. The attitude that education (not grades, but the real education) is important. This doesn't seem to correlate with wealth much though. A lot of rich folks built their wealth by working hard from zero. Which is frequently not education-heavy field and their mentality is not much different from barely educated handyman. While a lot of well educated people (teachers/educators, all kinds of office workers, engineers and whatnot) are not even middle class.

<comment><USER20> I'm from the US, and have no idea why rich/poor entered this discussion. My parents were very poor, but reasonably educated. I never picked up on any hint of a correlation between wealth and good grades.

HOWEVER, I saw an enormous correlation between wealth and going to university.

<comment><USER16> I also belong to the poor-but-educated-parents so I know what you're saying. I would assume the explanation for people with poor parents doing worse is because the parents have less time to be involved. But if you want to know more there are numerous studies. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It shows an interesting conundrum. Tell kids—and even people—that their work is awesome and they won't strive; tell them the harsh truth and they won't try again. Bulk of my personal history consists of falling in the latter. I hated being mediocre, and in my school life, I barely tried anything; when I did, it only took a brief while to understand that I am not up for it.

What's the solution? It's not as easy as educating students about growth mindset or long-term rewards of failure. They wouldn't absorb it the way you intended. Most failures don't necessarily motivate to improve. In fact, I think they result in people dropping out. It takes a long series of failures before you accept it as a part of the process.

I have read many theories surrounding how we can make our kids strive, make them resilient, and compassionate. So far, none of them have sounded convincing. There are probably many hidden factors involved and I guess it mostly boils down to: environment and luck.

<comment><USER22> You don't need to laud the outcome, you need to laud the inner part of the child that is striving to be better and that enjoys the process of doing the thing for its own sake. They need to know where they are, but discouragement is more of a sign that they're not enjoying the activity. When someone really enjoys something they like finding the flaws in what they're doing so they can get better.

I was far more discouraged learning French than Russian and Russian isn't exactly easier than French. The difference was that I was being forced to learn French against my (at the time) wishes. I just wanted to do math and play with computers - things that didn't discourage me.

Viewed from this angle the task of guiding children is different: How do we get them to enjoy the things we need them to learn?

I don't have an answer to that, but maybe its ok. Maybe children also need to learn that sometimes they need to muddle through something they hate, and maybe one day they'll change their mind about it.

<comment><USER16> > discouragement is more of a sign that they're not enjoying the activity. > When someone really enjoys something they like finding the flaws in what > they're doing so they can get better.

Are you sure this correlation is unidirectional? As a tutor, I frequently get people to enjoy things they didn't before simply by trying really hard to avoid discouraging feelings. In a way, a large portion of my tutoring is about getting people to enjoy the things they used to hate, because that appears to massively improve retention rate.

There's some more here if you're interested in how you get people to enjoy stuff: [http://jorendorff.github.io/hackday/2013/tutoring/](http://jorendorff.github.io/hackday/2013/tutoring/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think that blaming current narcissistic trends on this guy is extremely naive: as so many others point out these are pervasive all over the western world. And it ignores more fundamental changes, like the growth of private mass media which is now ubiquitous, the permeation of the advertising language into our daily lives, the take-over of the Internet by corporations that profit precisely from our individualization, and other consequences of a decades long ideological war on any form of collectivist thought.

<comment> J-dawg This is a very good point. The author is promoting his book about self- obsession, but conflating self-obsession with self-esteem seems wrong. They are surely linked, but are different things.

In fact, people with low self-esteem are more likely to appear self-obsessed because they need validation and reassurance from other people. They literally spend more time in their own heads, worrying about what others think of them.

If you have a solid core of self-belief, you're less likely to care about others' judgement of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _" I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special."_ \- Jane Lane, in _Daria_ , after being sent to self-esteem class in high school.

<comment><USER9> I sort of feel like _Daria_ should be required watching for any adult with a "genius new idea" for improving education and child-raising. If your clever new scheme wouldn't work at Lawndale, it's not going to work in the real world either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As with many social reactionary trends, it seems like one flawed system (all spoils to the "winner") was replaced with another flawed system (there are no winners).

The former system tends to reward those who have inborn or socially provided advantages, and makes the prize the end goal rather than the process. This can result in winning-at-all-cost behavior, even if results in damage to oneself or society (i.e perf enhancing drugs).

The reactionary everyone-is-a-winner approach robs people of signal they need to optimize their efforts to succeed.

IMO a saner approach would be to encourage competition but not make suffering via social exclusion or destitution the cost of losing.

Intra-group competition within those bounds can make the group stronger, but left unchecked can do the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER26> There seems to be several obvious mistakes in the article and in the original movement:

A. Idea that you can easily mold the core beliefs of other people by simply telling them to be like this or that. It's not generally true. But low esteem specifically makes it difficult to accept positive external feedback. Even when it's hard earned and genuine.

B. Treating human self image as one dimensional linear thing. Where on the other end you have narcissism and on the other complete self-worthlessness and ensuing violent depression.

The reality seems to be lot more nuanced. There are things like self-respect, self-compassion and sense of (potential) usefulness to others. None of these are hard linked to how good or bad you feel about yourself.

C. Some kind of misunderstanding of Narcissism. You can never turn normal healthy adult into narcissist by praising too much. (But you may cause some other negative effects.) Actual narcissist are often depressed themselves. Actual narcissist often aren't particularly interested in putting selfies to Instagram.

</comment><comment><USER27> > A little more than a year later, Barrowford found itself in the news again. > Ofsted had given the school one of its lowest possible ratings, finding the > quality of teaching and exam results inadequate. The school, their report > said, "emphasised developing pupils' emotional and social wellbeing more > than the attainment of high standards". Somehow, it seemed, the nurturing of > self-esteem had not translated into higher achievement.

Maybe Ofsted is measuring the wrong things.

</comment><comment> J-dawg Related question: does anyone have personal experience of significantly improving their self-esteem as an adult? Or is your level of self-esteem pretty much fixed as a child and something that needs to be "managed" in adulthood rather than changed?

<comment><USER28> I've done so.

I strongly encourage some kind of fitness routine or activity. I think a lot of cases of low self esteem come from a mind-body disconnect. And that allows for resentment or even hatred of your own body. That hatred may be subconscious or overt.

Actually engaging in a fitness routine undermines that dichotomy, particularly a skill based one. Coupled with the fact that pretty much everyone treats fit, attractive people way better in their daily lives, you rapidly build up a virtuous cycle of self esteem, fitness, and social approval.

<comment> J-dawg Thanks, that's encouraging. I don't think it's the whole story because I work out fairly hard and still have low self-esteem, but it's good to know that change is possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is worth mentioning that the school in the article, Barrowford primary school in the UK, was given a 'Good' (2 on a scale of 1-4) Ofsted report [0] in 2012, then in 2015 (just after the 'heartwarming letter' went viral) this dropped to Inadequate (4) and the most recent report in 2016 had them back up at 'Good'.

It's also worth noting that in the 2015 'Inadequate' report, they specify that:

> Standards are improving and are getting closer to those attained nationally > by seven- and 11-year-olds as a result of some well-targeted small group > teaching, particularly of disadvantaged pupils.

So standards had improved, but they felt the need to lower the report from 'Good' to 'Inadequate'.

It's almost like the Ofsted were punishing them for getting famous.

[0]: [https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find- inspec...](https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection- report/provider/ELS/119166)

<comment><USER30> Anecdotally I have heard of schools failing Ofsted for allegedly political reasons (ie they are still comprehensives and not on the government's preferred "academy" funding model; an assessment fail can force their hand at getting in line). I would take ofsted ratings for any comp with a pinch of salt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's unfortunate that this guy polluted the memesphere with this. The research into the lifelong benefits of children having access to secure attachment figures is mindblowing -- would have been great if he got passionate about approaches that actually have big impacts.

You can build "self-esteem" from a variety of things, the most sustainable and healthy of which is from a deep sense that you can handle whatever emotions come up in your system and by extension, whatever life throws at you.

Building "self-esteem" on the fact that you accomplished something -- say, won a tournament or built a company and not on the experience of not abandoning yourself along the way is a recipe for unfulfillment and a string of other ills.

Healthy self-esteem is not built by giving everyone a trophy or protecting them from their own emotions but rather, helping children learn that they are accepted no matter what emotions they are having and thus learn to accept themselves no matter the emotional experience they are having.

As a former World Games Invitee, I can tell you that losing in competition is painful. For me, often debilitatingly so. And it wasn't until I was able to explore the roots of that pain response that I could heal old traumas from my childhood of my father giving us the silent treatment for days at a time after losing as a high school football coach and the unhealthy relationship he had with performance coming from farther upstream in our family system.

Our culture has created a false dichotomy of "positive and negative" emotions where we avoid conflicts, numb out with drugs, sex, TV, accomplishment, religion, food, conflict, drama, criticism and more. Our nervous systems don't feel safe processing anger, sadness, despair, and grief and so we turn to Psychiatry to suppress the symptoms vs. developing the capacity to be with our entire range of emotion and present experience.

</comment><comment><USER32> What needs to be encouraged is _genuine_ improvement. I think the child that came 14th should get recognition, if last time she came 33rd in the same field.

In addition, top performers should always be encouraged. Relative to their peers, they have achieved as much as they can, and that should be recognized and lauded as well.

</comment><comment><USER33> > At Barrowford, people learned, teachers were discouraged from issuing > punishments, defining a child as "naughty" and raising their voices.

Tell a person that they're stupid every day and then ask them to apply themselves. They're not even going to try. Now call a kid naughty and then ask them to behave themselves.

<comment><USER34> Tell them they're naughy when they behave naughtily, tell them they're nice when they behave nicely.

That sounds like a solid plan to me, and there's no reason to see why it would then be a problem to ask them to behave themselves.

<comment><USER15> A kid that believes that he is inherently naughty wont even try nor has reason to try to behave itself. It is not even actionable command. Especially when it comes to little ones, telling them what they should do and then insisting on it work waaay better then any amount of hurting them (whether physically or when you try to make them feel bad).

The fact is, the spoiled generation has really lower criminality rates, violence rates, takes less drugs then supposedly better behaved predecessors. People love to compare worst students now with best students of their generation or with their idealized idea of how great they themselves were - ignoring huge amount of people who dropped out of the school knowing pretty much nothing and that was it. Meanwhile, current best students are actually pretty good.

It is not all down to parenting changes only, but given better objective results the nostalgia for good old times is not really fact based.

<comment><USER35> "A kid that believes that he is inherently naughty"

Occasional negative feedback doesn't create an inherent self-image.

"It is not even actionable command"

These are children, not puppies; children are perfectly capable of associating being called "naughty" with specific behavior.

You have very extreme views regarding children.

<comment><USER15> Negative feedback is much larger category then just telling someone "you are naughty". There was not mention of occasional in op post either. Most troublemakers are not making trouble occasionally - the kids who are real problem do unwanted things often.

"These are children, not puppies; children are perfectly capable of associating being called "naughty" with specific behavior."

Their implication about specific behavior being often "playing in sight" or "I wont please teacher so I will make myself funny so other kids like me at least". Or the implication does not matter, because behavior was down to impulsive or unable to control emotions (I am frustrated I act out so it gives me attention and it is already reflex at this point).

"You have very extreme views regarding children."

Nice try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Another article in The Atlantic was published recently, mentioning John Vasconcellos. Kristin Neff thinks self-compassion works better.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why- self-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-self- compassion-works-better-than-self-esteem/481473)

Neff also has a book [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004JN1DBO](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004JN1DBO)

<comment><USER37> That article was posted here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314958)

428 points | 25 days ago | 148 comments

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Vasco and his humanist priest had their Catholic theology all wrong, and their heresy had disastrous consequences. There is a tendency within Catholic circles to view oneself only as an irredeemable sinner. This fills one with shame and causes a sort of false humility that convinces oneself to reject all good things ("his professional success was at odds with how he thought of himself; he felt he didn't deserve it"). One further effect of focusing excessively on one's sinfulness, rather than on the love of God, is that quitting sin is much harder. The priest's belief that man is inherently good is also heresy at odds with scripture.

The truth as the Church would describe it is that man is intrinsically sinful but has been redeemed through Christ, and that should fill one's heart with joy and gratitude. No, man does not _deserve_ any good thing, but when good things happen they should be appreciated as gifts, not rejected out of shame. This is true humility.

Some claim that self esteem should instead be replaced with self-compassion. This is a good idea that is in line with Church teaching, since to see yourself as God sees you (with unconditional love in spite of one's faults) is to adopt a perception which is based in truth, rather than the self-esteem movement which is based on convincing yourself of the lie that you are unconditionally good.

</comment><comment><USER39> I find the topic of self-esteem super interesting.

Somehow it seems to be one of the most fundamental factors of our well being and the course of our life. Yet we usually don't even try to measure it. Do I have below or above average self-esteem? I couldn't say.

Googling around brought up the "Rosenberg self-esteem scale" questionnaire. I tried it. Scored is 14. Which is considered low. Uh oh :)

Now what?

<comment><USER40> Well, you know, just be yourself, unless of course your are shit...

Also, do keep in mind that there are a lot of losers out there. Changes are your are a loser.

See, this is a silly road to take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Self-esteem is obviously important, and low self-esteem can obviously be a problem.

However:

1) It is not the only problem out there; 2) Lying about somebody's achievements is not a good way to raise their self-esteem, in the same way as maxing out your credit card on indulgent purchases is not a great way to achieve happiness. It works, somewhat — just until it doesn't. 3) A better way to achieve genuine self-esteem is to solve objectively difficult problems, successfully. Tests and exams are not problems; they were meant to give you an objective feedback so you could adjust your priorities accordingly. The straightest way to unlink test results from self-esteem is to give them in private and discourage comparison. 4) Like in sport, self-improvement is what counts in life, not the compared results. You are better that you were a year before, and that's all that matters.

</comment><comment><USER42> My personal-often-difficult journey through life tells me this...there are _at least_ two types of self-esteem, and probably several more.

Achievement-esteem of course has to do with the trophy stuff and doing things your peers can't do as well. I excelled at this sort of thing and have all sort of Al Bundy-type anecdotes I'm sure no one wants to hear.

The much more important type of self-esteem is the one that forms much earlier in life and is instilled by your parents love and devotion, and is the one that is much more important to your future-self's emotional well being.

My personal experience tells me this one drives addiction and probably many criminal behaviors as we get older.

As a proponent of the Einstein's block universe theory, I often wonder if everything is already baked in and we are just what we are destined to be anyway, so what does it matter how we feel really?

</comment><comment><USER43> Penn & Teller did a great episode of this on bullshit. Season 8, Episode 9.

</comment><comment><USER25> The writer throws his credibility under the bus with this:

> On the downside, it also included a white man in a turban who predicted the > work of the task force would be so powerful, it would cause the sun to rise > in the west

White men in Turbans might be Gora Sikhs, who are sincere adherents of their particular faith, and are undeserving of this bigotry if the speaker was a member of the group.

Even if it was just a white man in a turban, so what? There is no minimum melanin requirement for wearing one. And how does that information advance the article's argument at all?

<comment><USER44> I think you are being a bit harsh here. Sure, the white man in a turban might be a totally normal person capable of carrying out good work. But in terms of probabilities, there's also a significant chance they are an esoteric new-agey type (in my mind). The latter possibility is confirmed by the "predicted the work of the task force would be so powerful, it would cause the sun to rise in the west" bit, which is the actually critical part of that quote. So the turban bit is included to give a fuller picture of this weird new-agey type who says ridiculous things like that, or so it seems to me.

<comment><USER25> The author provided no context for the sun rising in the west comment, which in every usage I've seen is a metaphor for a fundamental societal shift, not a literal astronomical prediction. The principle of charity applies there too.

The reality that a large number of Gora Sikhs practice the faith they were raised in undermines the new-agey argument, unless one is singling out their actual religion which is centuries old in it's current form.

The only other explanation for the comment is the appalling idea that a person should be ridiculed for adopting the culture of which they don't share the dominant adherents' physical phenotype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think people on both sides of this issue like to blabber a lot about human psychology and high falutin theories. At the end of the day, in any domain, you have to actually implement your ideas, and actually show that they work. A broken system that sometimes works is better than an ideal system that has never been shown to work.

</comment><comment><USER46> > To answer that, you have to go back to 1986 and the work of an eccentric and > powerful California politician, John "Vasco" Vasconcellos

Funny that they don't really describe who he was or his political position (state senator).

I find it hard to believe that 1 CA state senator is responsible for a syndrome experienced in the U.K.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is not a news article, but an excerpt from an upcoming book:

> Adapted from Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed And What It's Doing To > Us by Will Storr, published by Picador on 15 June...

(Edit: note the author's begging the question in the subtitle.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't help codependently caretaking everyone in this thread by attempting to other-esteem everyone through the upvoting of all comments.

</comment><comment><USER48> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) is more complete

</comment><comment><USER49> The entire system of institutionalizing your children to teach them to be functional is the root cause, never let whatever self-esteemers or new mathers or whatever goofy next educational horizon the principal learned in their post-doc educational studies class override the laborious, at times excruciating, but ultimately rewarding goal of tactical, immediate, and focused remediation of your children's emotional vulnerabilities.

Tangentially, this is what the book Frankenstein was all about, the effect of education on different individuals, the most memorable of the monster being educated only formally, presumably by being given 'you showed up ribbons', with no family support structure, and growing up... with a rotten brain.

</comment><comment><USER50> So this must be where Barney came from. "Everyone is special" was such pablum.

</comment><comment><USER51> Meh

1\. "prioritising their feelings of self-worth, telling them they are special and amazing, and cocooning them from everyday consequences."

This annoys me, when people throw in an entirely new assumption at the end of a sentence "...cocooning them from everyday consequences"

You can entirely regaurd growing adults with positive self regard AND let them experience the consequences of their actions.

The worriesome part about this is the conflation that consequences = lack of positive self regaurd to the growing adult.

If you truly uncaccoon growing adults from consequences and let them experience the results of their mistakes, they don't need your lecture of negative judgment on top of it, life will be there to teach them, and you can positively regard them as humans that make mistakes, and by not caccooning them expect them to solve the problems.

I mean honestly, the parents who believe their kids need a lecture about every mistake they make and judgment are the ones who are known as helicoptor parents and actually those kids end up being the least capable of being their own advocates because their parents never back off and allow them to make their own mistakes and struggle to find their way out.

This is why the Standford admissions office did an article on this, supposed Helicoptor parenting which was basically Stanford having problems with all these kids with 4.9 GPAs, 87 AP exams, science fair admissions with PhD level work put into them, who were held to hardcore high standards all work no play no emotion work work work your life = your GPA and the school you get into, and saying these kids literally could not solve the simplest everyday life problems and their parents called the school everyday trying to micromanage them or argue with Professors if their kids got less than B+s on exams

Its also why after the Gunn highschool suicide incident, highschool kids posted online to the parents to "back off" and quit pushing their kids so hard.

It's hard for me to take the rest of the article seriously, but I read on...

This is to show the other extreme and REAL effect of the opposite of show no compassion, only regard growing adults based on their accomplishments relative to everyone else.

If you take this attitude in life youre not helping your kid grow, you suffocating them, and debilitating their own sense of life navigation. This isn't about them, its about YOU imposing your self worth and narcissism and identify and your own self worth on how far along you can get your kid in life, and you need to back off.

I've witnessed this first hand going to university, and was really disturbed by helicopter parents versus my upbringing which was not helicopter parenting at all. Never seen kids more miserable in their life. I'm not even sure it was their life, they were walking poster children for their parents to show society look what I can do. Very few times did I see the kids who grew up like this get to make any of their own decisions. Very sad.

2\. Grade inflation IS NOT there to boost self esteem, its there to allow elite institutions to maintain elitism by getting ivy kids good jobs and preparing them well for exams.

2/3s of all grades made at Brown University are As. It's there so everyone can get good jobs at high end consulting firms if they choose to instead of using their Political Science degree for some less profitable career path where the need is great, and grades/competition/elite ivy names matter less.

GPA grade inflation is about highschools gaining and maintaining status to justify private school tuition, and college does the same equivalent but has the double incentive of increasing competition to admissions for more room to choose the cream of the crop, and increasing the dowry back to the school from happy and financially successful alumni.

Both appeals to the idea that

a. negative judgment from their parents or teachers is the only way to allow growing adults to experience consequences of their actions

b. grade inflation is for the self esteem boost of individuals.

are false and the rest of this article rides on these astounding assumptions the author assumes you will buy into

*Note: I do understand the everyone is a winner, and clapping for every extracurricular club your kid joins, and treating them like little geniuses who Harvard would be at a loss of not having because youve decided thats the case for your baby since he showed his genius capabilities by bring two months early on the growth scale for expected timeline for piecing legos together, and ever since youve just been doing your job by providing the best past of growth for your little genius...yeh yeh yeh I know that happens

but that has nothing to do with needing negative judgment to grow, or the motivation behind grade inflation, which is strictly for the long term financial benefit of the institutions providing it.</comment>


Towards De-Identification of Legal Texts - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.03739 <comment><USER2> I would love to see this work continue; 84% is not bad for a starting point. Fascinating stuff!</comment>


Car Crashes Into Crowd at SXSW (at least 2 fatalities) - <AUTHOR> http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2014/03/13/car-crashes-into-crowd-at-sxsw/

<comment><USER2> 2 dead, 20+ injured and 5 in critical condition.

Why isn't the government and the entire population pushing for and subsidizing autonomous vehicles? Cars are dangerous.

"X were playing at the time."

Is there a band named X or did the writer forget to replace the placeholder?

That's why I always put very noticeable placeholders when doing a first draft. "{{{REPLACE_WITH_BAND}}} were playing at the time."

<comment><USER3> Yeah, ban cars because cars bad. No people drive cars. People no can think good. People not designed for fast car speed. The car think better for people. Then never bad things happen and all people will be controlled by good cars that think good.

<comment><USER2> The Google self-driving cars have been well over 500k without an accident in automatic mode (there was one accident with someone driving it in manual). Autonomous vehicles will result in a huge reduction of automotive fatalities and it's not inconceivable that they would eliminate automotive deaths all together.

Even though I thoroughly enjoy driving, as do many people, it's simply dangerous. Yes, car too big, going too fast, lots of energy stored up, and humans are not perfect, so horrible disasters such as this happen.

Would you rather airplanes be fully autonomous or have a human pilot in constant control 100% of the time?

<comment><USER3> This isn't a matter of choice for me, from what I gather. It's already obvious to me that very powerful faceless people, somewhere out there, have decided that this _WILL_ happen, one way or another, and the dismal tide will creep up around us all.

It doesn't matter much, whether _my_ car or _your_ car is autonomous, so long as the prevailing wind perpetuates a certain concentration of robotic vehicles on the road. Choice, freedom, privacy, become mere platitudes in such an environment. Meaningless words parroted in the same sentence as terrorism, patriotism, job creation and affordable healthcare.

<comment><USER4> I really hope that you are trolling. Otherwise, I literally cannot fathom what went through your head as you were typing your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this Hacker News? Or America News?

<comment><USER6> How is this any worse than the rampant "I haven't done anything of note, but let me tell you what you should be doing to succeed" posts on here?

<comment><USER5> Those posts are somewhat relevant to computers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a detailed map-timeline of the crash, per police reports: [http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/img/photos/2014/03/13/5f/...](http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/img/photos/2014/03/13/5f/e0/sxsw- mohawk-auto-fatal.JPG)

Found it on twitter from @kathyblackwell with the Austin-American Statesman

</comment><comment><USER8> People smoking too much weeds? Ban weeds.

Several firearm slaughters? Ban guns.

Couple of knife mass murderings in China? Ban knifes!

1 reported vehicular violent murders? Ban people driving.

Perpetual occupational wars for Democracy _(oil)_ that kill in the millions? Meh.

<comment><USER9> When empathy fails, there's always an irrelevant political statement to be found.</comment></comment>


Edward Snowden could remain in Hong Kong for years, legal experts say - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/12/edward-snowden-hong-kong-years <comment><USER2> Yeah, unless he has an accident, Litvinenko-style.</comment>


Things that do not make sense (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-that-do-not-make-sense.html?full=true <comment><USER2> _When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain- relieving power of saline solution disappeared._

When I read this, I said, out loud, "What the flying farkmipple?"

So does naloxone block placebo effects in general, or only placebo morphine? Inquiring minds want to know.

<comment><USER3> The placebo opiate link is widely known. Naloxone blocks opiate receptors which blocks placebo effect. Also, children aren't susceptible to a placebo effect.

Check out a good lecture on pain at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQS0tdIbJ0w> for more context.

<comment><USER2> Thank you, kind sir or madam!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Astronomers call this boundary the Kuiper cliff, because the density of space rocks drops off so steeply. What caused it? The only answer seems to be a 10th planet. We're not talking about Quaoar or Sedna: this is a massive object, as big as Earth or Mars, that has swept the area clean of debris._

They've got this kind of backwards. They describe this like something basically pushed parts of the Kuiper belt inward to form the steep gradient. We're pretty sure Neptune and Pluto pushed things out to form the Kuiper belt. As well Mike Brown's work that found Xena, Santa, Easter Bunny etc. would have picked up on a Mars sized object past the Kuiper Belt but close enough to shepard things.

 _Maybe we can't work out what dark matter is because it doesn't actually exist. That's certainly the way Rubin would like it to turn out. "If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances," she says. "That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle."_

Actually modified Newtonian Dynamics or MOND equations are WAAAAY harder to swallow than dark matter.

Dark Matter: The majority of particles don't interact significantly with photons

MOND: Particles shooting through space either spontaneously replicate or behave non geometrically. Gravity falling off at 1/R^2 is a consequence of geometry, the surface area of a sphere. MOND proposes 1/R^2 + R/N (for some very large but arbitrary number N) which makes NO physical sense. Meanwhile gravitational lensing observations continue to provide evidence for "invisible" matter.

 _If the observations are correct, the only vaguely reasonable explanation is that a constant of physics called the fine structure constant, or alpha, had a different value at the time the light passed through the clouds.

But that's heresy. Alpha is an extremely important constant that determines how light interacts with matter - and it shouldn't be able to change. Its value depends on, among other things, the charge on the electron, the speed of light and Planck's constant. Could one of these really have changed?_

Actually any sophomore or junior in college is exposed to the concept of evolution in the fine structure constant, while it isn't taught as definitive, it's hardly heresy.

AND it goes on, none of these (at least the physics based ones) really have much debate in the scientific world.

<comment><USER5> Were they debatable 4 years ago, when this was written?

<comment><USER4> Kuiper Belt stuff, yes...ish

Dark Matter, eh we had a lot less direct evidence of it but MOND still made no sense.

The rest? not particularly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh, we definitely understand number 4 now. All scientists and researchers should be aware of the observer-expectancy effect: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer-expectancy_effect>

Wikipedia also briefly covers the debunking of the Belfast homeopathy results: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#Subsequent_researc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#Subsequent_research)

<comment><USER7> But that still takes number 4 into #1 territory (Placebo effect). It's good to know that homeopathy is pretty much bunk as expected though - thanks for those links! I was rather confused when I first saw this article.

<comment><USER6> From the perspective of the patients in this type of research and "treatment," I think you are correct. Looking at the effect on science and knowledge as a whole, however, the observer-expectancy effect is quite damaging and is not a mystery at all.

This team (and many other teams) of unfortunate researchers got caught up in a belief system that skewed their results. Ironically, the more skeptical one is of a particular belief, the deeper in love one will fall with it when it appears to be correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Regarding the tetraneutron issue: I would be interested if they could repeat the experiment which supposedly detected this. My guess is that this was a statistical anomaly. It is highly unlikely 4 neutrons could arrive more or less at the same time at the same place in the detector, but the alternative, that something is wrong with the Pauli exclusion principle, may be even more unlikely. Accordingly I would seriously bet if they did the exact same experiment again (shooting beryllium atoms at a carbon target) that they would not detect any "tetra-neutrons".

With things like this, I always remember something Sherlock Holmes said in 'A Study in Scarlett' I think it was though not quite sure where it was exactly - "Once one has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the case."

Here, it strikes me that though the anomaly seen was very improbable, the alternative idea that the Pauli exclusion principle and hence the standard model is wrong in some way is tantamount to impossible. It is far easier for me to believe what they saw was just a fluke, than to think there is an issue with the Pauli exclusion principle. Of course, if they can repeat the experiment, that is something else again, and I suppose then further inquiry would be warranted.

</comment><comment><USER9> That should be retitled to 13 things that do not make sense in Physics.

</comment><comment><USER10> _2 The horizon problem_ _.. You can solve the horizon problem by having the universe expand ultra-fast for a time .._

Quran 51:47

<http://islam.thetruecall.com/Quran_Chapter_51:47.htm></comment>


The Life of the Queen Bee: Superb Macrophotography - <AUTHOR> http://www.scienceray.com/Biology/Zoology/The-Life-of-the-Queen-Bee-Superb-Macrophotography.302147 <comment><USER2> With bees disappearing in the U.S., beekeepers have to regularly order new queens.They order new queens from China. And China is now taking over the Royal Jelly market, wholesaling to the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> And here I thought this would be a photoessay on girls in middle school...

<comment><USER4> I was thinking Dolemite.</comment></comment>


Cleaning up AWS with Boto3 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ranman.org/cleaning-up-aws-with-boto3/ <comment><USER2> Netflix Ice ([https://github.com/Netflix/ice](https://github.com/Netflix/ice)) looks amazing. Going to setup tomorrow using the docker image ([https://github.com/jonbrouse/docker- ice](https://github.com/jonbrouse/docker-ice)) and Amazon EC2 Container Service.

</comment><comment><USER3> I worked somewhere recently where somebody had set up a daily buildbot to make Amazon images for each of several projects; After two years of this, they were shelling out $5k/mo in AWS hosting fees for data alone.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks ranman.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to spend $2500 on Machine Learning content? - <AUTHOR> Employer has allocated $2500 for learning that expires end of the year.
Here's my current plan - can anyone suggest a better way to spend the remaining $1150?
Spent:

  $999 - Udacity's Deep Learning Nanodegree
  $345 - Python and career-related books
 Plan to spend:

  $999 - Udacity's Deep Reinforcement Learning Nanodegree
  $49 - Coursera's Deep Learning specialization
  $100 - more books
 Thank you <comment><USER2> A subscription to safaribooksonline.com ($399/year) is my favorite way to spend part of my learning budget. Having access to the entire catalog of O'Reilly (and it's affiliates) books is awesome. Access to conference recordings from Strata is really nice too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, this looks great - I didn't know about this.</comment></comment>


The Global Mobile Innovators Tournament – Submissions by November 16 - <AUTHOR> http://www.glovators.io <comment><AUTHOR> IBM and 4YFN announce the Global Mobile Innovators Tournament!

Already a Bluemix pro or looking to hone your Bluemix skills? IBM and 4YFN are pleased to announce the Global Mobile Innovators Tournament, giving developers and startups from around the world, the opportunity to create game changing mobile applications in return for some seriously good prizes! Also get your startup noticed and recognised by supporting Telco's: Rogers Communications, Vodafone, KPN & AT&T.

Participants can enter one or more challenges over a 50 day period to create world class applications based around three Internet of Things themes: Smart Homes and Buildings, Connected Travel and Transportation, and Smarter Healthcare.

If you're a startup or developer with a great idea and want to put your skills to the test, plus have the opportunity to earn professional recognition, win a trip to 4YFN 2016 in Barcelona and even the potential to have your application commercialised and more.

SEVEN EASY STEPS!

(1) Register for the challenges

(2) Tweet that you've registered for the Tournament using #glovators

(3) Register for Bluemix and apply the promo code (you'll receive this in your Thank You For Registering email from firstname.lastname@example.com)

(4) Get enabled on Bluemix - check out all the materials available to you and leverage the experts who are here to help you!

(5) Review the Telco APIs made available to you

(6) Start building your mobile app(s) on IBM Bluemix

(7) Submit your entry by the 16th November (or entries, depending on how many challenges you want to enter!).

Register for the challenges today and receive FREE IBM Bluemix until November 20, at www.glovators.io.</comment>


Second Life's logo isn't part of its retention problem – but its name sure is - <AUTHOR> https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2020/05/second-life-logo-rebrand-color-linden-lab.html <comment><USER2> Pedantic</comment>


Looking for Beta Testers - InventoryThis.com - <AUTHOR> http://inventorythis.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Use InventoryThis.com tools to create a home inventory or to manage your small business inventory. Keep track of your things so that you can share, sell, or give them away.</comment>


Migration flows across the world - <AUTHOR> http://peoplemov.in

<comment><USER2> This is nicer: <http://migrationsmap.net/>

Anyway, both sites use pretty obsolete data by now.

<comment><USER3> If you know more recent data, I would be interested (I made the map).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The table is pretty but it doesn't sort permanent versus temporary movements. For example I don't think the 1 million Pakistanis who've emigrated to Saudi Arabia will be allowed to get citizenship and settle which is quite different to other countries.

<comment><USER5> This is a good point and perhaps the reverse case: e.g. immigrants who _have_ become citizens, would be even more interesting. For example the % of Americans foreign born is higher than this (I believe) but many have already received citizenship and are presumably not counted here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Adding in a table of the countries with the most emi/imigrants by proportion of the population would be useful.

I thought Afghanistan had a high emigrant figure - 8%

BUT New Zealand has 14% !

<comment><USER6> >10% of the Kiwi population went to their culturally-similar neighbour with a much better economy. Similar story with >15% of the Irish emigrating, mostly to less-economically-dire Britain (although there's a long established Irish exodus tradition), and for that matter the >1.2 million Brits off to Australia.

I expect most of these migrations won't be permanent, and these stats probably include a large proportion on 1 year working visas.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, and a key thing missing from these graphs is ease of movement. As far as I know, Australia is about the only country Kiwis can move to for work without requiring a visa, whereas the UK is getting stricter and stricter each year as it looks towards the EU rather than the Commonwealth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, both the UK and Russia are top destinations for people to both go to and leave.

Also there seem to be almost as many people leaving Russia to go to the Ukraine as leaving Ukraine to go to Russia. Any one have any idea why this would be?

<comment><USER6> In Russia's case there's no real anomaly: it's one of the most populous countries in the world anyway and has a lot of ex-USSR family and historic ties to the surrounding countries. Throw in the sort of political problems and business opportunities _on both sides of the borders_ that might further incentivise migration.

The UK has strong historic connections with the rest of the world that are reflected in relatively generous reciprocal visa arrangements, strong family ties and dreams to move here. Europeans can easily move backwards and forwards as job opportunities come and go, and usually speak good English these days. People from South Asian and Caribbean have strong family connections as well as economic incentives to migrate here. On the other hand, we have a strong economic incentive to take higher paying jobs in Australia (with young people getting automatic work visas for a year in advance of any attempts to secure a job) or the US, which is probably a little less unsympathetic towards Anglophone countries and qualifications when it comes to handing the visas out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly there was a discussion over Bill Gate's measuring teachers report with heated debate about the right graph to choose (scatterplots vs xxx)

I like this and it is interesting information, but sorry, the "right" graphic to use here is the Mercator projection. I have to scroll down a long way to see which country people leave Azerbijan for (Russia).

But the _data_ is interesting.

And its a helluva lot harder to code what I want :-)

<comment><USER10> I'd argue that the Mercator projection is not the right projection if you want to show the entire world. The distortion introduced over large areas is fairly extreme, and I think relative geographical sizes are fairly important for displaying that kind of graphic.

<comment><USER11> > _The distortion introduced over large areas is fairly extreme_

Yeah, but the areas which are most distorted are also usually the least populated, by a long shot, so it may be just fine for showing anything related to people... sure Greenland's way too huge, but, well, meh...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice. I'd sort the "Migrant destinations" by number, and add a key for what each colour means.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very nice information, but how about laying this out horizontally instead of vertically? The to/from lines are hard to follow if the destination country is three full screens away.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's intresting to note that something like 15% of Mexico's _entire_ population has moved into the USA.

I'm note sure I've seen such a massive exodus like that before.

</comment><comment><USER15> What's the period illustrated? Is it emigrants per year?

</comment><comment><USER16> On the peoplemov.in site I did not see the word "legal" anywhere? Did I miss it?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is exactly what I was looking for over the past week or so! Great work.

</comment><comment><USER5> An interesting take-away: The US is the only 'western' country with a significant East Asian demographic. I'm particularly surprised to see that Philippines come in 3rd to the US After Mexicans and Chinese. Perhaps related to the US military base history there?

</comment><comment><USER18> Clicking on the names of the countries doesn't do anything for me.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting. It looks like people in the Russian Federation can't make up their minds about Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Lots of movement, near zero net.</comment>


Persuasion versus Populism - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153480921421/persuasion-versus-populism <comment><USER2> How about the movie where trump wants to bring back torture and war crimes and vows to imprison his political enemy and global warming is a Chinese hoax?

<comment><USER3> Doesn't currently Administration use torture, commit war crimes and behead polítical enemies?</comment></comment>


We shouldn't take peer review as the 'gold standard' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-we-shouldnt-take-peer-review-as-the-gold-standard/2019/08/01/fd90749a-b229-11e9-8949-5f36ff92706e_story.html <comment><USER2> Just to clarify: this article is against _gold standards_ , not against _peer review_. It concludes by observing that peer review is a necessity. The argument it raises is that peer review doesn't mean what lay audiences think it means.

I think they're clearly correct, and that even on HN, in a community that (roughly) prides itself on being scientifically literate, there are broad misunderstandings of what peer review means (during the bogus "Sokal Squared" hoax, for instance, many commenters implied that peer review prior to publication was meant to encompass replication). Also, while I'm not a "scientist", I've gotten to do some peer review work for ACM and Usenix, and even in the little bit of review I did, I seen some shit. There is much less formality and oversight to review than you might expect.

<comment><USER3> Is there any proof peer review has increased scientific productivity? It is relatively new, and I don't see any reason prima facie why it would work better than an editorial teaming willing to delegate when necessary. Anecdotally, I see lots of academics complain about very important results being unable to make it through peer review. Ralph Merkel's early groundbreaking cryptography work was suppressed for years by unthinking peer review. From Merklel:

>My first paper (and, in fact, the first paper) on public key cryptography was submitted in 1974 and initially rejected by an unknown "cryptography expert" because it was "...not in the main stream of present cryptography thinking...."

<comment><USER4>
      Is there any proof peer review has
      increased scientific productivity?
      It is relatively new

According to [1] "The council minutes of 1 March 1665 made provisions for the tract to be revised by members of the council of the Royal Society, providing the framework for peer review to eventually develop, becoming fully systematic as a process by the 1830s."

Peer review is a relatively new procedure in the same way that California is a relatively new state :-p

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Transactions_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society#Origins)

<comment><USER5> However, some famous papers like Watson & Crick's DNA model were published without peer review.

<comment><USER6> You can publish today in PNAS without review if you are a member of the national academy of sciences.

<comment><USER7> Not exactly any more. It's true that it used to be that a member could just contribute their own manuscripts which would be published as is without review. But after some unfortunate cases of questionable stuff getting published, even the contributed track has to be peer reviewed these days. However members still have leverage in that they can choose the reviewers, which obviously could be abused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Test results are very easy to fake. The "gold standard" is whether outside groups can run the same tests and reproduce the same results. Peer review doesn't mean much more than "this paper seems interesting and is well-written and properly formatted."

<comment><USER9> I disagree. The gold standard is if outside groups subject your findings to _new_ experiments and reproduce the same results.

<comment><USER10> I agree with you.

"I can run your code/experiment/etc. in your population and get your results" isn't the gold standard either. "We approached it from a different way, and with a different population, and we get a consistent answer" is both harder and more compelling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a recent PhD graduate that focused heavily on publication and collected ~20 publications. I think the situation with peer review is worse than discussed here.

Peer review:

1\. dramatically reduces the pace of progress

2\. exacerbates publication bias

3\. creates a false sense of accomplishment

4\. creates a false meritocracy

5\. creates many perverse incentives

(3) and (4) unfortunately wrap into grant financing as well. The merit of your research isn't measured on its impact on the human condition, but on it's 'impact' factor (a measure derived from your publications).

The gatekeeper problem here is pernicious as well. If you become a highly cited author your ability to get/maintain financing improves. You also become a gatekeeper as a peer reviewer. Which means that you are now strongly incentivized to accept papers from people who cite your work or align themselves with you, and reject everything else.

What is absolutely amazing here, is that the peer review process is opaque. It is my belief that if you knew who reviewed which papers you would quickly discover that mild to severe abuse of peer review is the norm, not action by a handful of bad actors. This is because the entire academic reward system is wrapped into the process. Getting your name on a big paper can have lifelong ramifications on your ability to get grants, start companies, do consulting work, etc.

Peer reviewers should probably get paid for the work. If they don't get paid then their incentive to do review must come from somewhere else, vague notions of improving the field don't cut it. Peer review should obviously be transparent. Some people might be uncomfortable signing their name to a paper rejection, but its time to get over that. A small payment might help reviewers overcome this discomfort. It is bizarre that peer reviewers don't get paid. Peer review is valuable work if done right, and without payment all the reward of being a peer reviewer comes for the wrong reasons.

Finally, I agree with some other comments. Publication should not be contingent on peer review, it should come first. This would increase the pace of progress, reduce publication bias, reduce the false meritocracy, reduce the ability for bad actors to censor research, and more. The cost would be a larger number of publications, but perhaps this would help people realize that many of the publications coming out right now are of little value.

Transparency is badly needed in many facets of academic research. My company made a site that helps bring transparency into literature review (sysrev.com).

<comment><USER12> Those are all very real problems (and as you point out, they impact grant review as well). On the other hand, fully transparent peer review doesn't necessary address most of them. Reviewers who have to sign their reviews may be reluctant to anger colleagues (or try to curry favor with them).

As you presumably know a many journals have experimented with open peer review, but editors still need to police the reviews to look for bias. It solves some problems but creates others.

<comment><USER11> transparent review isn't a perfect solution. But the problem you suggest of reluctance to anger colleagues or currying favor are worse under the current system than they would be under a transparent one.

Just because other journals failed in the past doesn't mean we shouldn't try again in the future! Maybe there were some mistakes we could learn from? Also the internet is becoming a more familiar tool used more often by more people every day, maybe it just wasn't the right time previously.

<comment><USER10> Double-blind peer review fixes "reluctance to anger colleagues or currying favor" and is widely used by journals in my field.

<comment><USER13> Maybe.

> In the late 2000s, widespread debate and controversy ensued after Budden and > colleagues (2008a) found that a switch to double-blind review in the journal > Behavioural Ecol- ogy led to a small but notable 7.9% increase in the > 2proportion of articles with female first authors

[https://www.eswnonline.org/wp- content/uploads/gravity_forms/...](https://www.eswnonline.org/wp- content/uploads/gravity_forms/23-b28d66b6400f67d9648a049f8faf44e0/2015/05/Darling-2015-Doule- blind-peer-review.pdf)

Others agree: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629234/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5629234/)

However:

> Findings from studies of journals that have actually adopted the practice > are non-conclusive. For example, Budden and colleagues show that the > introduction of double-blind review by Behavioral Ecology was followed by an > increase in papers with female first authors (Budden et al., 2008). However, > a second paper reports that female first authorship also increased in > comparable journals that do not use double blind review (Webb et al., 2008). > A study by Madden and colleagues shows that the adoption of double-blind > reviewing in the SIGMOD conference led to no measureable change in the > proportion of accepted papers coming from "prolific" and less well- > established authors (Madden and DeWitt, 2006), but a later study contests > this conclusion (Tung, 2006).

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2015.0016...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2015.00169/full)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What would be the alternative to peer review? White papers on "pop" topics? Opinion pieces by think tanks?

The ideal of peer review is pretty much the gold standard of scientific work. By that, I mean the idea that your work should undergo rigorous scrutiny by your peers before it gets accepted for publications. As any other human system, though, the process is still subject to politics and biases.

My hope is that a truly open review system might one day democratize science and ameliorate the issues with the current review system. For example, it would be cool to put all the revisions, reviews and authors' comments in the open as an online appendix. That will show how the paper changes as it moves trough the process, the issues that the reviewers brought up, and how the authors responded to them. It will also help show if there is systemic bias against certain researchers or topics.

<comment><USER15> I think that _publication_ should not be gated by peer review. Release early, release often, publish experimental setup and what you are looking for prior to the actual experiment, etc.

We have arxiv now; the whole process could open up even more, slightly closer to research in the open, like open-source development in the open. This is to make peer review easier.

Then what is currently "publication" becomes what it should be, in the sense of adding value: _curation,_ filtering the most interesting, least dubious results.

<comment><USER16> arxiv is actually _less_ open than most traditional venues.

Anyone can submit to most conferences and journals. Anyone at all! No PhD or reputation needed and it's blind. All that matters is the quality of the research.

To submit to arxiv you need to be approved by someone as a legitimate researcher, or beg for reviews from people you've never met without any anonymity.

It's somewhat a step backwards in some ways.

<comment><USER17> > To submit to arxiv you need to be approved by someone as a legitimate > researcher, or beg for reviews from people you've never met without any > anonymity.

I did not have to do something like this.

<comment><USER16> Well that's good for you isn't it! What about everyone else? Not everyone is automatically approved because of things like their email address. That's my point - they focus on reputation and credentials rather than the blind value of the work. It's less accessible.

<comment><USER18> The confusion comes from the 'journal' aka topic on arXiv, which can have different settings for when an author can submit. Some are more stringent than others. It is not an arXiv wide issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The idea that in scientific publication, more is better, makes little sense to me as a practicing scientist. The scientific literature is already filled with papers with conclusions that are not well supported by the data, and that is after 50-80% of submissions are rejected.

To argue that publication should have fewer restrictions, one needs to show that the modest number of papers that are improperly rejected by every journal (not just the first submission) equals or outnumbers the overwhelming number of submissions that should not be published because they reflect a misunderstanding of their field or a misinterpretation of the data. For many (most) scientists, the problem is not that important results are unpublished, the problem is that it is almost impossible to keep up with the current gated literature, particularly when that literature is full of mistakes. While it is certainly true that some reviewers are biased and some ill-informed, most of the time papers are rejected because the authors did not communicate well (for papers that should be published) or because the authors did not understand that their data did not support their conclusion (papers that should be rejected).

The scientific literature needs a better signal to noise ratio, not more noise.

<comment><USER13> The rejection of a submission does cancel a work, it merely shifts elsewhere. The question is whether peer review gives the right incentives; many suspect that publication venues with an ostensibly stricter peer review actually encourage the production of more noise, not less. See [https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.0029...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291/full)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > A 2015 study of 1,000 medical journal submissions found that of the papers > that were eventually published, the 14 that became the most frequently cited > were initially rejected. Groundbreaking studies by Sir Frank MacFarlane > Burnet, Rosalind Yalow, Baruch Blumberg and others were rejected by peer > reviewers, yet later led to Nobel Prizes.

Yup, if you are actually doing good work it is likely to be so different to what is going on that people have a hard time evaluating it.

<comment><USER21> The question is why where they rejected? My wife is a researcher and does a fair amount of peer review and sometimes she has to reject papers, not because their necessarily wrong, but because they're so badly written its hard to tell if they're right or wrong. Other times the research and paper is fine, but the conclusions are overstated, for example claiming that A is better than B, when all they've actually proven is that A is not worse than B. Other times it's great paper in every way, but covering a topic that really isn't relevant for that particular journal.

Basically there are lots of reasons to get rejected that have nothing to do with the quality or validity of the research.

<comment><USER10> I recently rejected a paper as "This is fine, and really interesting, but no one who reads this journal is going to get it".

<comment><USER22> One of the problems with peer review is that behind the veil of anonymity people can get away with such presumptuous nonsense. You are part of the problem.

<comment><USER10> An extremely technical paper on centrality metrics in a clinical journal is _not the right audience_.

I suggested there were ways to approach writing it for that audience, but they'd need to extensively rework the paper. The reason I know that? I've done the same thing, for the same journal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-robertson A curious thing that's happened in some parts of mathematics is that formal peer review, needing coordination of journals, editors, and reviewers, can happen after many people have already read the paper (effectively informally peer reviewing it but with fewer comments), and even after people have cited the paper.

This peer review then seems to not serve much purpose.

An example is the recent first finite prime gap paper where the result was quickly strengthened several times by other authors long before the paper made it into any journal.

Another example here: [https://mobile.twitter.com/adrianprw/status/1156534906618597...](https://mobile.twitter.com/adrianprw/status/1156534906618597377)

</comment><comment><USER23> "Studies have shown that journal editors prefer reviewers of the same gender, that women are underrepresented in the peer review process, and that reviewers tend to be influenced by demographic factors like the author's gender or institutional affiliation. "

Most venues are double blind, so reviewers wouldn't know about the latter things. Having fewer women in the reviewer pool is unfortunate, but it's hard to see how it would effect the mean review quality in a direct way assuming that men and women are equally good at reviewing (maybe in an indirect way it could harm reviews by increasing the load per-reviewer).

<comment><USER24> Not sure if this is the case, but I'd like to play devils advocate. While most venues are double blind, it is still possible there is a subconscious gender bias. Many studies have shown that gender can be readily detected from anonymized authors based style alone.

[https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W11-0310](https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W11-0310)

[http://cs224d.stanford.edu/reports/BartleAric.pdf](http://cs224d.stanford.edu/reports/BartleAric.pdf)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187705091...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050916326849)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For everyone complaining about peer review, another alternative to open review is paid reviewers who focus on a particular topic. For example, I'm an editor at a journal where statistical reviewers are paid and evaluated, while the remaining (content) reviewers are not. This ensures that we have a rigorous review of the statistical methods, at least. I do think payment increases the reviewers' responsibility and conscientiousness, and the overall quality of the subsequent articles. (nb This probably has been tested somewhere.)

BUT - paid reviews are not feasible for many journals, especially open access/low-cost journals where margins may be thin. (Conversely, Elsevier should be able to pay their reviewers in gold bullion, rather than taking advantage of the scientific community's altruism, but that's another conversation).

</comment><comment><USER25> I think the peer review system is ripe for, as SV people call it, "disruption".

Even something like an app that you submit papers to, which then anonymizes them, standardizes formatting and presents them to randomly selected experts for review in a certain time period would go a long way compared to the current process. In my lab at a prestigious Canadian university, the papers' authors names were visible as well as the reviewers names because any back and forth post review would happen through email. I think journals and universities need to buy into a system that standardizes this process so at least these basic requirements of impartiality can be met.

<comment><USER26> While I'd apreciate a little fresh air in the process as well...

> an app that you submit papers to, which then anonymizes them, standardizes > formatting and presents them to randomly selected experts for review in a > certain time period

Except for that it's not an app (that would be kind of pointless, why would I want that on a phone instead of a webapp), that's pretty much the standard in my field. Anonymization is done through the authors (if the conference/journal wants it to be) and ensured by the conference submission system. Formatting is standardized anyway.

The problem is the "randomly selected experts" part, for many (most?) subfields suitable reviewers are a scarce resource, to the point that in quite a few double-blind processes I've seen one or both parties could recognize each other's work or review.

I've always found openreview [1] a nice way to at least make the process public, especially when anonymity is an illusion anyway.

[https://openreview.net/](https://openreview.net/)

<comment><USER25> By app I meant software not a phone app.

Secondly, I think the problem of having few experts in the field is a legitimate problem but I don't think the status quo is a good solution either. I think it erodes trust in the scientific community which is very hard to build back up.

<comment><USER26> I think we need an overall shift in incentives in academia before that will change. Popular conferences see an all time high in submissions, though I do not have data on that I'm sure Journals face similar problems these days. I feel like that's not an aspect that will get better in the short term.

On the app/phone app thing: Ah, fair enough, sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm going to propose something that is unconventional today, but I believe will be standard practice at somepoint.

Overtime we have shown that many mistakes are made in labs and we know that many experiments are not replicable.

I think its time that we ask researchers using public funds to film their entire experiment from beginning to end. Every pipette, every prep etc.

Peer review should also have a video audit. Then a replication in another lab. The cost of ensuring results are what they say they are would be offset by less wasted research dollars on false rabbit holes.

<comment><USER13> Are you trying to re-invent [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility_Project) ?

<comment><USER27> No. Reproducibility requires double the investment and may also have the same or different mistakes. A video log would help researchers find errors and confirm results.

Video is simply a better solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The whole scientific publishing field is still stuck in previous century. We desperately need a github for science, where any reader would be a reviwer, who would be able to rate the article and comment on it, and then journals would use these ratings combined with credibility rankings of reviewers to create indexes of interesting new article-repositories.

<comment><USER29> I have people citing research with useless AMA standard. If you want both parties to agree, they need to see the Data.

Most studies become uninteresting after you read their terrible data.

<comment><USER28> Absolutely agree, articles without data and without the sourcecode, are not science, and that's another reason why we need github for science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [http://archive.is/UCSof](http://archive.is/UCSof)

</comment><comment><USER31> Somewhat tangential, but are there any journals that will only accept a paper if someone unrelated to the author can replicate the study? Or a journal of only replicated studies?

<comment><USER13> Sure. My favourite is IPOL Journal · Image Processing On Line [https://www.ipol.im/](https://www.ipol.im/), which is doing it since 2011: «IPOL is a research journal of image processing and image analysis which emphasizes the role of mathematics as a source for algorithm design and the reproducibility of the research. Each article contains a text on an algorithm and its source code, with an online demonstration facility and an archive of experiments. Text and source code are peer-reviewed and the demonstration is controlled. IPOL is an Open Science and Reproducible Research journal».

More recently, some megajournals have joined the trend and are trying to expand it, particularly eLife: [https://elifesciences.org/labs/ad58f08d/introducing- elife-s-...](https://elifesciences.org/labs/ad58f08d/introducing-elife-s- first-computationally-reproducible-article) (also covered in [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00724-7](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00724-7) ).

For some context see: * [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) * [https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fninf.2017.0006...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fninf.2017.00069/full)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> We don't.

Peer review is a very helpful component of a system that slowly filters and refines academic work. It's like the first air intake stage of a jet turbine.

</comment><comment><USER33> If peer review in Academia is anything like code review in corporate software dev it's probably next to worthless.

<comment><USER34> Peer review never seems to catch actual bugs but does give you helpful tips like "we already have a function that does this" or "the language has a feature for this"

<comment><USER33> Oh code review done properly is really great - I'm just jaded by repeatedly seeing code go up and getting that green tick with no comments and knowing that the reviewer barely even attempted to read it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd) better?</comment>


SzaboDice: Dice betting in Ethereum smart contract using Random.org via Oraclize - <AUTHOR> http://szabodice.github.io/ <comment><USER2> This raises a big red flag for me. Sounds like you lose your investment if others put in a larger investment?

Play or invest

Each SzaboDice contract is bankrolled by up to five investors. The highest bidders control the bankroll, the losers surrender their shares.

<comment><USER3> If you search for "divest" in [https://github.com/szabodice/szabodice.github.io/blob/master...](https://github.com/szabodice/szabodice.github.io/blob/master/dice.sol), I think the intention is that the smaller investors get a refund in this case (but I haven't tried to understand the code carefully).

<comment><USER4> You are correct. If an investor is outbid, his investment is returned to him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If Ethereum scripts could reference the hash of a future block, you could eliminate the oracle.</comment>


Can you disappear in surveillance Britain? - <AUTHOR> http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article7096105.ece <comment><USER2> You might want to read the discusson from the last time this was submitted:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1307571></comment>