Entire field of particle physics is to switch to open-access publishing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-deal-for-particle-physics-1.11468

<comment><USER2> The SCOAP^3 consortium's news announcement about this can be found at <http://scoap3.org/news/news95.html>

Something like this may have been inevitable in particle physics: with essentially all articles appearing freely on arXiv.org, the journals have already been starting to look less necessary. That reality may have made them more willing to agree to something like this. It will be interesting to see, ten years from now, whether this model continues to be viable or whether the field will have adopted some entirely different mechanism for peer review.

It appears that the articles will be published under CC-BY licenses. The definition of the affected articles is quite broad, too: "SCOAP^3 Articles are defined as either all articles appearing in journals mostly carrying High- Energy Physics content, or articles appearing in "broad band" journals which have been submitted by researchers to arXiv.org under the corresponding categories."

The close integration with arXiv.org is pretty much essential for this to work, but I was still a bit surprised to see that arXiv categories are used as _the_ defining feature of "particle physics content". (For those in the know, those categories are hep-ex, hep-th, hep-ph, and hep-lat.)

<comment><USER3> If the openness is increasing the number of citations of the articles in open journals it will affect the impact factors of the other journals and may force them to switch to open access later. I am really interested in the results as I have strictly now ideas in which way it will go. Are the non open high impact journals going to stay at the top?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why, in this day and age, is there still _publicly funded_ research that is _not_ open access? Also I could rant for hours on the need to make your data available for any peer reviewed publication.

<comment><USER5> Because academic journals are products of inelastic demand. Researchers _need_ to publish to keep their jobs[1]. Thus there is absolutely no incentive for the channels through which this publishing occurs to offer free access.

[1]By the way, being able to publish is especially necessary to receive public funding in the first place.

<comment><USER6> > By the way, being able to publish is especially necessary to receive public > funding in the first place.

Being published in Nature gives you bonus points when it comes to funding. Which I don't quite understand, cause Nature is like the last journal where I'd look for newest information on my subject.

<comment><USER4> Publication in Nature is not so much for newest information on your specific and somewhat narrow subject, but for more or less breakthroughs of various degrees.

From guidelines[1]:

\- report original scientific research (the main results and conclusions must not have been published or submitted elsewhere)

\- are of outstanding scientific importance

\- reach a conclusion of interest to an interdisciplinary readership.

[1]<http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/#a1>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to be a really good step towards breaking away from the current journal publishing monopoly which makes access to cutting edge research so expensive. I hope other branches of science adopt this as well.

<comment><USER8> Not just science, it would be good to see open-access across all fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Physical Review D, the journal that publishes most papers in the field, negotiated a fee of US$1,900 per article "on the principle that we should maintain our revenue", says Joe Serene, treasurer and publisher at the American Physical Society, which owns the journal._

The "principle that we should maintain our revenue"? I like that principle. Which box do I check to have that apply to me as well?

I don't understand why SCOAP3 isn't driving a harder bargain. They are anticipating a $10MM budget --- wouldn't this be enough to hire some good editors and publish online?

If the whole field is behind this, worries about "impact factor" should disappear. Or is the problem that salary/tenure/promotion is tied to an outside assessment of "impact"?

<comment><USER10> I think the problem is that salary/tenure/promotion is tied to hazy, individual, non-standard assessments of impact, of which the calculated "Impact Factor" of journals that people publish in is one factor. My boss (and Public Library of Science founder) has a blog post related to this, <http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=911> . Essentially, hiring/tenure committees don't explicitly sit down and plug in the impact factors of journals that a candidate has published in, but most people have a hierarchy of journals in their mind, with Science, Nature, and Cell (for biologists) at the top.

<comment><USER11> _Essentially, hiring/tenure committees ... have a hierarchy of journals in their mind_

\-- Penn State has a "middle of the road" law school

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Almost all physics papers (not just particle physics papers) are posted on arXiv. Papers on arXiv are usually updated to the final published version, although the peer review process rarely produces significant changes.

It is unfortunate that university libraries will be continuing to send money to publishers who add almost no value to the scientific process.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's great to see Nature, itself a high-priced journal, running this story.

arXiv.org really makes downloading papers a breeze. If only it were so easy in other discliplines. It's a lot easier than downloading articles from, say, ScienceDirect. The latter is, despite its name, a lot less "direct" than former. Just count the HTTP redirects and the number of domain names looked up. And many journals seem to have their own idiosyncracies vis-a-vis downloading. arXiv is by comparison beautifully simple and reliable. It has a nice consistency about it.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Upfront payments from libraries will fund the access." Great, so the Library still has to pay for it...

<comment><USER15> Well, _someone_ has to. The alternative is having the authors pay, and that creates the wrong kind of incentives.

<comment><USER16> I wrote about this recently [1], and here's my best shot:

 _Contrary to what some readers have said in e-mails to me, or inferred from what I've written, I'm actually not at all opposed to peer review or peer- reviewed publications. But the important thing these days isn't a medium for publishing—pretty much anyone with an Internet connection can get that for free—but the imprimatur of peer-review, which says, "This guy [or gal] knows what he's talking about." A more intellectually honest way to go about peer- review would be to have every academic have a blog / website. When he or she has an article ready to go, he should post it, send a link to an editor, and ask the editor to kick it out to a peer-reviewer. Their comments, whether anonymous or not, should be appended to the article. If it's accepted, it gets a link and perhaps the full-text copied and put in the "journal's" main page. If it doesn't, readers can judge its merits or lack thereof for themselves.

The sciences arguably already have this, because important papers appear on arXiv.org before they're officially "published." But papers in the sciences appear to be less status-based and more content-based than papers in the humanities.

I think this change will happen in the humanities, very slowly, over time; it won't be fast because there's no reason for it to be fast, and the profession's gatekeepers are entrenched and have zero incentive to change. If anything, they have a strong incentive to maintain the system, because doing that raises their own status and increases their own power within the profession._

Given how cheaply one can find or buy a website / blog these days, I'm not sure where all this money is going.

[1][https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/the-stupidity- of-w...](https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/the-stupidity-of-what-im- doing-and-the-meaning-of-real-work-reading-for-phd-comprehensive-exams/)

<comment><USER17> Researchers and scientists could have asymmetric keys and peer review in that fashion. The authors could append cryptographic signatures to the article. Then we don't need centralized journals, just a list of academics whose scientific rigor is trusted.

<comment><USER18> I have often thought about doing something similar to this. Basically, you publish a signed version of your paper on your own website, and then other scientists can sign it with notes. It would be kind of like a "Facebook like" system. (By "sign", I mean a cryptographic signature.)

"82 PhD scientists have reviewed this paper, including 3 people in your close network and 2 more people from your extended network." ...or something like that.

You could do a network-graph search. Start with some professors that you trust, and some keywords that you're interested in and start walking the graph from there.

I don't know what the profit motive would be for someone to build this though. Nor the motive for individual reviewers to carefully review someone's paper and provide detailed useful feedback...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess my question is whether we need the journals at all ... the process of printing the journal itself certainly isn't the hard part, but is there a way to properly do peer review in an open system?

I'm certainly happy to see this consortium has moved in the right direction, but could it be even more open?

<comment><USER20> Peer review is done for free by the community in any case, so this would not be a major problem. Most suggestions for a post-journal system I have seen so far are about setting up electronic journals with editorial boards that send out submissions for peer review as usual.

Moving away from journals seems to be largerly an issue of missing consensus and inertia. Also, where you publish is important for hiring committees, existing journals have a lot of credibility, newly sprung up ones not so much.

<comment><USER21> We already have model for future journals: <http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA/> SIGMA is just an overlay over arXiv with added peer review. Also it has non-zero impact factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The hacker way extends beyond computing.

<comment><USER23> It's actually Computer Science that has most scattered and disorganized publishing culture, and could use a lot more collective hacker attitude to somehow fix things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We used to joke that if you were in the Tevatron (Fermi lab) parking lot you were a co-author!

</comment><comment><USER25> They should drop the "Consortium" from the name. It's cleaner.</comment>


Hot Startups Lack Female Employees (even as applicants) - <AUTHOR> http://www.observer.com/2010/media/hottest-startups-full-bros

<comment><USER2> At some point, "accommodating women" turns into "telling women what they want". If they aren't even _applying_ , isn't this at the very least _perilously close_ to the latter? Regardless of what you are going for, you have to at least _show up_.

Consider what is really being asked for here; startups are now "supposed" to go seek women out who aren't even indicating they are searching for a job and hire them? That's not a sensible demand; translated into real action that borders on harassment.

<comment><USER3> Because there are fewer women then men in the technology space, they're a scarce resource. Startups who want diverse teams need to compete for them.

Also, parts of the YC universe have a bit of a reputation for being uncomfortable with women. Reaching out sends a clear signal that you're not like that -- you're the kind of company that wants women to work there enough that you're willing to take the initiative.

<comment><USER4> You're asking for startups to compete for a scarce resource (women) in an already scarce subset of engineers (good ones).

That's a pretty tall order for startups. And an almost impossible one if you expect them to take time out of (likely) much more pressing matters to expressly reach out (in some as yet undefined "woman-friendly" way) to females just to that they'll apply.

Not hire females. Just to get them to apply.

<comment><USER3> It comes down to whether you see diversity as valuable from a business perspective.

If so, you treat this just like you would any other important business problem.

If not ... well, then I guess it's not surprising that women don't want to work there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am really sick of these articles; why cant we just focus on talent. Put the best people in the best positions. It should not matter if they are male, female black or white.

<comment><USER6> How do you measure talent while recruiting? The person with the most accomplished resume or who can answer your technical questions most aptly? Both are only proxies, albeit usually pretty good ones, for measuring talent. Perhaps that interviewee was nervous or maybe they're really really bright, but just haven't been programming as long as some of their counterparts.

Tracy Chou of Quora wrote a really insightful post about being a female software engineer: [http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software- Engineerin...](http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software-Engineering- Part-I). It really opened my eyes to some of the reasons why maybe there aren't more women who even get started in the field - even if there isn't outright prejudice, women in engineering still face a lot of challenges that men simply don't. Sure, you can argue that you should give the most talented person the job, but keep in mind that the methods we use for measuring talent are hugely subject to circumstance. For example, I'll bet the average age when most female engineers start programming is higher, so they simply haven't been programming as long. It is rather naive to believe that talent is the primary indicator of whether someone gets a job or gets into a particular school - success is just as much a product of circumstance, getting the necessary opportunities, and other external conditions as it is of one's own inherent talent and work-ethic. And let's face it, women in software engineering face a wholly different set of circumstances than their male counterparts, so let's stop pretending that it's just about talent.

<comment><USER7> By making the "women in tech" conversation about anything other than talent, you are immediately creating another "affirmative action" situation.

Why should female applicants get a hand-out over more qualified male applicants? That doesn't do a damn thing other than even out some cosmetic "gender gap."

If I am passionate about programming, having done it from an early age, and I lose a position to a person who just discovered he/she could make a pretty penny at this "computer stuff," well, that really pisses me off.

<comment><USER6> I'm not advocating affirmative action or anything even remotely resembling that. In fact, I'm not offering any kind of solution at all. Just responding to having my eyes opened a little bit by a first-hand account of the struggles a woman in engineering faces.

I don't advocate affirmative action, but I acknowledge some of the reasoning/merit behind it. For example, I got into my dream school. Sure, I worked my ass off, and sure I wouldn't have been happy if someone else got in instead of me in part because of their race/gender/socio-economic status, but I also know that deep down, I'm really lucky/fortunate. I'm from a low-income family, but had tons of support/opportunities that a lot of other equally- deserving, equally-qualified people simply didn't. If affirmative action worked in a perfect world where out of two equally-qualified candidates, the upper hand went to the one who overcame more obstacles, then I wouldn't have any problem with it. Again, I'm not espousing choosing an applicant solely based on race/gender/socio-economic status, but if you turn a blind eye to an applicant's circumstances, your methods of evaluating candidates is extremely flawed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how much of this is because of the company and how much is because of the company's stage in its lifecycle.

Google today is known as a pretty female-friendly employer, at least among tech companies. The gender balance in the cafes seems about 60/40 male, and engineering is about 10% female (which sounds terrible but is actually better than many undergrad CS departments). Several top executives are women.

But Google's first female hire was Marissa, who was something like employee #20. Which means that when Google was the size of FourSquare or Tumblr or Kickstarter, it was even more male-dominated than they are.

It could just be that women have no desire to pad their egos by working at a successful startup. If you don't care about the cash and cachet of that, there's no reason to put yourself through the risk and uncertainty of it.

<comment><USER9> MM was actually Google's first female engineer, not their first female hire.

<comment><USER10> No, Lori Park holds that distinction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know why we should focus on startups when this is a much more global issue. If you look at your typical college's CS, Engineering, or Math departments you'll find similar ratios of females as you find in the tech workforce. I have no idea why that is but it's not caused by who startups are hiring. If you look at a typical college's marketing department you'll see a lot more women, how is it surprising that there are more women in marketing positions?

<comment><USER12> Agreed. I think the issue is exacerbated in startups because they inherently have fewer employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's important to highlight and actively try to fix this because it's a bootstrapping problem. Tech is male dominated, so it is a less comfortable work environment for many women, so few women go into tech, so tech is male dominated. (There are of course many other factors in play, but this is one which can be nicely isolated and is important on it's own)

The principal problem with objections centered about "but why can't we just focus on talent" is that they are short sighted greedy optimizations which are actively trapping the tech industry in a local talent maximum.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't know the figures for the US, but in the UK roughly 10% of developers are female. So it's not surprising that a startup with 9 developers might have no female developers.

There might be an issue due to hiring methods (i.e. recruiting through venues that are male dominated, adverts being tailored to males, etc.), but the overwhelming reason is likely to be the lack of female devs across the industry.

</comment><comment><USER15> When I started out, about 30 years ago, the male/female ratio in IT was about 60:40. But I presume that men were also a larger percentage of the total workforce at that time, at least in "professional" roles.

The first time I really noticed the change was at Sun around 1998/99 when my group, containing about 100 engineers, only had two women in it.

<comment><USER15> Bad form to reply to myself, but I just went and read the Tracy Chou post mentioned elsewhere here [http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software- Engineerin...](http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software-Engineering- Part-I)

I have to say that I recognise everything she says. For the record, I am male.

On reflection, the IT world has become a place where a huge amount of male posturing and faux competitiveness goes on. It wears me down. I know a lot of guys behave this way, but the IT world is best powered by cooperation and collaboration, not by a lot of willy waving.

It's interesting that she mentions her mum being in IT 25 years ago and gave it up 10 years ago, as I know a lot of women who did just that. A lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So I run a conference, Swagapalooza, which involves companies launching new consumer products to bloggers. The products are mostly food, fashion, tech, books, music, clothes, parenting stuff, etc. While I do get a decent number of applications from women who want to present their products, most of them are for Etsy-like stuff, which generally doesn't work as we are only looking for products that we have the potential to help tip. The percentage of women-run consumer product companies whose products are interesting[1] and mass produceable are probably just as low as the percentage of women-run tech companies.

[1] Genuinely novel. Not just a company that silkscreens t-shirts with their own designs.

</comment><comment><USER17> What about the more tepid startups?

</comment><comment><USER18> I've often heard companies saying they would love to hire more women, but they lack the applicants. Can anyone that handles hiring for a company speak out on even the perceived ratio of applicants?

For what it's worth, I recently recommended my old boss at an unnamed large company in Silicon Valley hire a female colleague for a technical position I used to hold. If they won't apply, recommending a job to a woman you know is the next best step.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I just scanned through all the applicants we have received for advertised 'making' positions. To date, we have yet to receive a single female applicant"

When I see statements like this, I wonder what they've been doing to reach out to women. Usually the answer is "nothing" or "well, we asked our friends" ... in other words, they're not investing any significant effort.

EDIT: downvoted. I know you're shocked.

<comment><USER4> What kind of outreach do you expect a new startup to do? They don't exactly have an excess of free time or resources to invest significant effort.

And perhaps more fundamentally, are the job descriptions looking for applicants biased towards males in such a way that it warrants an explicit female-oriented recruiting outreach?

<comment><USER3> There's a bunch of suggestions on the Geek Feminism Wiki at [http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Hiring_discrimination#Sol...](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Hiring_discrimination#Solutions)

Yes, most job descriptions give the appearance of being biased towards males. The best thing to do is get feedback on it from a couple of women with the skills you're trhing to attract and a diversity/recruiting expert. We did that at my previous startup and it made a huge difference.

If a company sees diversity as important, it doesn't really take that much time or money to reach out.

<comment><USER19> 'If a company sees diversity as important'

Maybe they seek success as important. How does a focus on diversity help a company succeed?

<comment><USER20> I work for a large company. They think it's important. The framing is along the lines of "How can we sell to everyone if we don't hire everyone?" If you are dominated by white males, you may be making wording choices and other decisions which subtly exclude women, blacks, hispanics, etc and you probably have no idea you are doing it. (Subtle does not necessarily mean the effect is small either.)

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Also, diverse teams outperform -- Scott Page's book The Difference presents the underlying cognitive diversity model for why, and there's been some great recent empirical work as well.

Conversely a lot of white guys don't believe that diversity leads to success -- and many of them talk primarily to other white guys who reinforce their views (or to women and people of color who agree with them). So, companies they run wind up with mostly male and mostly white development teams, building products optimized for white guys. It's a crowded market space ...

<comment><USER20> Anecdotally, my recollection is that the most successful organized crime group ever was successful in part because they would work with anyone, so long as they had the necessary skills. Prior to that, the Irish stuck with the Irish, the Italians stuck with the Italians, etc. Inclusiveness of people = not excluding skills/talent based on some arbitrary, irrelevant detail (like skin color, gender, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are a lot of things working against us.

In my experience, it basically boils down to not being given a chance.

<comment><USER3> Yes, very often it does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A lot of the comments here seem to focus on sexual harassment as The Issue. I wonder, though, about the issue of how close-knit and intimate start-up culture tends to be. There was a (flagged, dead) thread not terribly long ago where some married man had gotten his female co-founder pregnant and was looking for suggestions on how best to handle this big mess. Long hours, late nights and possibly no one else around in a close-knit, small social unit (aka a startup) is probably also a concern for some women, even if the men are all perfect gentlemen. They might not fess up to this angle but I think any concerns about this which one might normally have for work generally would be magnified by the type of intimate environment of a startup. An affair at work can lead to being fired (and sometimes other ugliness). So if someone has a brain and considers this to be a potential issue, it seems to me the wisest thing to do is not go there to begin with.

<comment><USER22> So the wife wasn't the co-founder?

<comment><USER20> Apparently not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Because most women are not good at programming. Because their brain lacks the wiring [1]. Otherwise they would've already jumped at a chance to secure $150k/year jobs.

Stop writing superficial articles that don't address the fundamentals.

[1] [http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/09/why_arent_mor...](http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/09/why_arent_more_women_in_scienc.php)

"Mental rotation tasks (see this CogDaily post), which require working with a three-dimensional representation of an object, have been found to have very large sex differences favoring males"

<comment><USER24> Most people aren't good at programming, at least until you train them. It's hard to convince women to spend ten years becoming excellent programmers when their peers disrespect and harass them. I've never seen credible evidence that women's brains "lack the wiring" - that's an awfully Victorian era sentiment. The fundamental problem here is with the behavior of men in the field of computer science.

<comment><USER7> If I were interested in becoming a cook, I would take the classes and become a cook.

If I were interested in becoming a dancer, I would damn well become a dancer.

You can't just say it's the mens' fault. That is disingenuous and insulting to me as a male programmer.

The fundamental problem has nothing to do with men: it's that women aren't interested at all in computers. They're interested in babies, families, and things that are warm, cuddly and emotional. I'm not being sexist, I am quoting my girlfriend.

<comment><USER22> Your girlfriend is sexist then.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Doomed Jets Lacked 2 Safety Features That Boeing Sold as Extras - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-features-charge.html <comment><USER2> > Boeing charges extra, for example, for a backup fire extinguisher in the > cargo hold. Past incidents have shown that a single extinguishing system may > not be enough to put out flames that spread rapidly through the plane.

Well that's something that is not comforting to read. Charging extra for comfier seats, I can understand, but charging extra for features that might be the difference between life and death for 100+ persons, that's just sick and criminal in my mind.

<comment><USER3> Road vehicle manufacturers also charge extra for safety features.

<comment><USER4> The person who will be occupying the vehicle gets to make those decisions. Unless you're buying your own 737, you don't get to make that choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _In the software update that Boeing says is coming soon, MCAS will be modified to take readings from both sensors. If there is a meaningful disagreement between the readings, MCAS will be disabled._

How was MCAS rolled out and certified flight-ready when it did not rely on readings from both sensors? This breaks a cardinal law of airplane safety -- always have redundancy.

<comment><USER6> Because MCAS wasn't originally proposed as having enough authority to make dangerous flight inputs. It was allowed by that standard.

Then Boeing increased how much authority the system had to pass a different part of certification without telling the FAA.

> "The FAA believed the airplane was designed to the 0.6 limit, and that's > what the foreign regulatory authorities thought, too," said an FAA engineer. > "It makes a difference in your assessment of the hazard involved."

[...]

> The discrepancy over this number is magnified by another element in the > System Safety Analysis: The limit of the system's authority to move the tail > applies each time MCAS is triggered. And it can be triggered multiple times, > as it was on the Lion Air flight.

I'd suggest reading the full article/context:

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/faile...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system- implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/)

<comment><USER5> Interesting, thanks for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be fair, I don't think the "disagree" light would've helped those pilots any. Knowing that the AoA sensors disagreed isn't going to help them troubleshoot a system they are not aware exists. It's just one more warning to troubleshoot while fighting the aircraft.

If anything, it's MCAS that needs to be heeding the AoA readings disagreement. Instead it's more than happy to only rely on the reading of one of the sensors.

<comment><USER8> I seem to remember reading about an incident recently where pilots noticed divergent sensor reading and aborted take-off.

It would seem that AoA disagreement would be the very first symptom of the failure that lead to these crashes. Since pilots are likely not to immediately notice this (hence the indicator), this feature may well have given them additional time to sort out a response. Depending on how this failure progressed, it may have even been discovered on previous flights or before take-off.

<comment><USER6> That's a really good point.

The AoA disagree could go off as soon as the nose is lifted, which still may give pilots just enough time to abort take-off or immediately request landing.

<comment><USER9> > which still may give pilots just enough time to abort take-off

Airliners are committed to takeoff by the point of rotation. Typical ops manuals would abort for any warning before 80kts, at a speed known as V1 they are committed (even in case of engine failure) this typically occurs 10-20kts before rotation speed where the pilot initiates lifting the nose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's comforting knowing the airline I usually fly on bought both options. I wonder if we could mandate these options being public and who ordered what, so that airlines are more hesitant to leave them out?

Reminds me so much of the car market though. Adding a $3 thermistor is "automatic temperature control" and requires a trim level that costs $1,400 more.

</comment><comment><USER11> Scary parallels with the way Tesla is selling software updates to enable features. Let's hope consumers don't have to choose which safety features they can afford in the future.

<comment><USER12> For a long time, ABS and airbags were as extras as well. The difference is that a consumer shopping for a car can decide how much safety they want to pay for, while air travelers have no idea how safe the plane they are going to board is.

<comment><USER13> ABS, ESP aren't only for the safety of the person buying the vehicle.

You can have the latest, safest car money will buy and get plowed by a 30 years old land rover without any crumple zone and die because he couldn't stop in the snow/rain (bald tires, used break pads, &c.).

It's always a balance between regulations and ""freedom"".

In some US states you can drive anything as long as it has and engine and a plate. I lived in CA for a while, everyone drive with bald tire, I remember opening google maps on a rainy day, LA area was full of the red ! accident signs.

The world is a big kindergarden, you can't expect people/companies to do what's best for themselves/others so you have to enforce the rules through laws and regulations.

If companies were allowed to sell cars without safety features for a lower price people would buy them.

<comment><USER14> That 30 year old land rover will most likely be obliterated by any modern car. When comparing old vs new cars the size difference is completely irrelevant. Modern compact cars are much safer than old large cars.

<comment><USER13> Yeah but we're not in a car crash benchmark here. If you end up paraplegic and the other guy is dead you still lose.

> When comparing old vs new cars the size difference is completely irrelevant.

impact force = mass * speed² / (2 * distance)

The crumple zone of modern car improves your _distance_ here, mass (size) still plays a huge role.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, they tried to fix an airframe stability problem (caused by fitting larger/heavier engines to an existing airframe platform) with a fly-by-wire solution.

Kinda like if you or I could rent an 18-wheeler truck with a promise that it "drives just like a car."

One wonders: Did outside air temperature or weight-and-balance issues figure in to these crashes? Hotter=less lift. Weight too far aft=nose up tendency.

<comment><USER16> An accurate analogy, although a better HN automobile analogy in the sense of more accessible to the general public would be trying to drive SUVs like cars results in rollover accidents.

Its an error of regulation to permit a ridiculously safety critical real world physical system to digitally emulate a historical virtual system to save training money. Its a perfectly good aircraft on its own; it just has intentionally hacked and modified controllers to fake being another plane, and those hacked and modified controls unfortunately kill hundreds of people.

Given the merger of government and aerospace its going to be a huge dysfunctional fight where neither side can back down and admit they need to change things. My guess is for purely political reasons both sides will admit guilt, although its obviously completely a government failure. On the other hand, as per the recent VW Diesel situation, if the government implements stupid regulations that are followed to the letter resulting in predictably dumb outcomes, the government accepted no blame and the company was attacked. There are strong indications going both directions which will make this interesting to watch.

<comment><USER17> >An accurate analogy, although a better HN automobile analogy in the sense of more accessible to the general public would be trying to drive SUVs like cars results in rollover accidents.

That analogy implies that the pilots were trying to fly the plane in a way that it couldn't handle. A better analogy would be a safety mechanism on the SUV that prevents drivers from turning too sharply and rolling over. The crashes are caused by that system incorrectly measuring the turn rate, forcing the car to drive straight, and have it run off the road.

Really, there's nothing wrong with the MCAS system in theory. Plenty of planes require computer controlled inputs to fly safely. The problem is in the execution. The base model lacks redundancy and pilots weren't trained well enough to handle the system malfunctioning. And in the case of the Lion Air crash a poor safety culture.

Honestly, the problem is probably already solved at this point. Correcting the issue that caused the crashes is simply flipping a switch. The issue is identifying what's causing the control issues to know which switch to flip. Every pilot should be hyper aware of the potential issue and they'll be able to easily diagnose and fix in flight issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am sure that some pricing and bundling consultancy has made a "good" job here.

</comment><comment><USER19> (Woof, sorry for the long comment) A little thought experiment, and I want to be clear, its apparent Boeing screwed up big time, but I also expect my airline to make every effort to incorporate all safety features. Since it's a bit of an ethical gray area where cutting edge or expensive safety features are knowingly foregone, I haven't seen the fact discussed concerning these airlines' culpability for choosing to acquire aircraft without safety features to save money (aka, to make more money), just like Boeing marks up the cost of these features to make money. I realize that the AoA disagree is a safety feature that would have informed pilot of a bad Boeing design, but are there other sensors and features that could have been offered by Boeing, but aren't available or aren't purchased for similar reasons. If it was an option on the order sheet, and they had technical consulting to assist with specificying the plane, then they made an active decision not to beef up on safety.

I'm sure there are better examples that have a higher probability of improving safety, but for some fun examples, where are the massive, inflatable, roofmounted airfoils that inflate like big airbag parachutes in the event of an impending crash. What about 5 pt harnesses for all passenger? Where are the uniformed armed security squad on every flight to deter hostage situations? What about full situational awareness mesh network radar comms a la the F-35? What about no carryons allowed in the cabin to reduce flammability and airborne objects during crashes? Each of these things offers a potential, incrementally-increasing level of safety for passengers, that are not taken up by the market.

For an analogy, If my cabby didn't buy curtain airbags from the Ford, and I get my head smashed in a wreck caused by a malfunctioning component elsewhere in the car, doesn't the cab company still have some culpability for skimping in passenger safety? If not in that scenario, what about a poor level of maintenance (but still technically compliant) of the vehicle? At some point, for contracts of carriage, it's up to the carrier to establish an expected, acceptable level of safety for its customers.

Again, it sounds like Boeing bears the lead blame, and it wasn't clear the features as sold offered valuable data to the pilot in the event of an emergency, but I also expect my airline/carrier to provide as much safety is commercially reasonable. Just like when reviewing legal contracts or lines of code, if a line item is added with no obvious reason for existing, one must ask "why is this item here?"

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm sure if Boeing had correctly described the lack of these features as potentially crashing the airplane, these airlines would have bought them. As it is, hundreds of people had to die because Boeing wanted to make a little extra cash selling essential, potentially life saving features as add-ons. If that's not criminal, I don't know what is. Of course, I would bet money that no one is held responsible for this, as usual. We probably won't even get a canned apology. This airplane design should be grounded permanently. If Boeing is willing to let hundreds die by making critical systems optional, who knows what other issues the plane has that will kill even more people? There should also be an investigating into how this plane was certified, as clearly regulators failed to do their job and check Boeing's greed. The CEO and people at Boeing responsible for this plane should face criminal charges as well as anybody in the regulatory bodies who decided to certify this plane buying Boeing's claims that it was just another 737 when that is not the case. Without criminal charges, Boeing and other companies are going to continue to play with people's lives to make a few extra bucks.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://youtu.be/UAvuZsflglw?t=8382](https://youtu.be/UAvuZsflglw?t=8382)

</comment><comment><USER22> > A United spokesman said the airline does not include the features because > its pilots use other data to fly the plane.

</comment><comment><USER9> An angle of attack sensor is loosely equivalent to a G-meter in a car. Calling it a safety device is a bit of tabloid reporting.

That said, given the sensors are used directly as input having a disagree light is a reasonable thing to expect.

<comment><USER23> It's standard equipment on new Cessna 172's and marketed as "Safe Flight", specifically called out as a way to avoid a stall, etc. When the industry says it's a safety thing, it's hard to blame a reporter.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, marketers aren't any better. If I was buying a new 172 I'd probably be more interested in a BRS (whole airframe parachute) than an AoA sensor.

[https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/general- aviation/201...](https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/general- aviation/2016-12-30/cessna-adds-safe-flight-aoa-new- skyhawks%3Famp&ved=2ahUKEwil3Pvvo5PhAhUr2OAKHT7rDygQFjAAegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw2KnayYMbyI7efq78lKx9EK&ampcf=1)

Since these are twin engine aircraft, you could make many arguments about blue line speeds and balanced runway lengths but I'll take your point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why is the story that Boeing sold them as extras instead of the airlines not buying the option?

</comment><comment><USER25> If it is a 737, the airline isn't buying any extras for comfort, even though they might give it a fancy paint job. (e.g. it's like putting a padded seat on a torture rack)

<comment><USER23> Not sure what you mean here. There are airlines with business class in a 737, and there's also the BBJ. Aircraft owners are free to choose how crowded the seats are on any aircraft.

<comment><USER25> You aren't going to be all that comfortable in business class if the airplane has a circular fuselage that squeezes you in the vertical direction.

The 737 is a classic story of undercompetition and underinvestment. The design goes back to the 1958 era 707, and it feels tiny on the outside even though it is big on the inside.

The Embraer 195 is much smaller than the 737 but it feels more like the 767 inside because it is designed with the human physique in mind.

Boeing was shocked by what it cost to develop the 787, but had it given the same treatment to the 737 it would have been able to recoup the costs more quickly because so many 737s get made. Also since the 737 is so common in the sky anyone who is concerned about climate change, noise, or any other environmental effects of air travel would see the 737 as a priority.

Ten years ago you could take a widebody from NYC to LAX. Today if you fly, you wind up on a 737 or an A320 which is basically the same thing. For me it is a reason to stay home, drive, or take the bus.

<comment><USER23> I think that's a reasonable point for the 737/A320 coach window seat. That egg shape of the Embraer hull does afford more room. It seems negligible for 737 business class though, since the seat is quite wide.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to build an application to post and share music - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Filestack/build-your-own-soundcloud-app-with-filestack-c7db5cdd124a#.yyma2q66l <comment><USER2> Cool stuff - good post.</comment>


Sunni vs. Shia: the roots of Islam's civil war - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2017/08/sunni-vs-shia-roots-islam-s-civil-war <comment><USER2> "Catholic vs. Protestant: the roots of Christianity's civil war"

I guess every article about Islam has to be framed in terms of violence.</comment>


Show HN: Ateroo – the address book of ethereum - <AUTHOR> http://start.ateroo.com <comment><USER2> "the facebook of..." isn't a good tagline.</comment>


Ask HN: What books to read on developing mental models and increasing cognition? - <AUTHOR> Books that might help in these areas:
1) Better Thinking techniques and Systems
2) Overcoming Cognitive Bias
3) Creativity/Innovation
4) Problem Solving/Decision Making
5) Any other similar area in business/life.
For example:
Peter Bevelin - Seeking Wisdom - From Darwin to Munger
The Personal MBA - Josh Kaufman
Charlie Munger - The Psychology of Human Misjudgment
Predictably Irrational - by Dan Ariely
Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life - Twyla Tharp
Michael Michalko - Creative Thinkering
Thinking in Systems: A Primer - Donella H. Meadows
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt <comment><USER2> How about some books that aren't pop-sci / business books? I am kind of biased, since I love this area of psychology.

\- The Sciences of the Artificial by Simon

\- The Psychology of Problem Solving by Davidson & Sternberg

\- The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology) by Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich & Hoffman

\- Minds, Brains and Computers - The Foundations of Cognitive Science: An Anthology (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies)

\- Choices, Values, and Frames by Kahneman & Tversky

The Sciences of the Artificial is a small but deep book by Herbert Simon, who is considered a key figure in founding the study of these areas (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Simon> ).

Davidson & Sternberg focuses on problem solving (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sternberg> ).

The Cambridge Handbooks (there are many others) in particular are excellent as they contain classic articles in Cognitive Science and Psychology, with introductions and overviews by people who actually research this area. The one on Expertise and Expert performance is edited by K. A. Ericsson (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Anders_Ericsson> )

Minds, Brains and Computers is another collection of classics, from a more model-based perspective.

Finally, Kahneman and Tversky offer a more economics-centric viewpoint. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman> & <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Tversky> )

If you read scientific articles in this area, you'll notice that many of these author's names will keep popping up...

<comment><USER3> "The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" is an awesome read, I recently bought it and started reading it.

Here are some really cool excerpts from the book:

[http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.ht...](http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html)

[http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.mem.exp.htm...](http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.mem.exp.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson - [http://www.amazon.com/Prometheus- Rising-Robert-Anton-Wilson/...](http://www.amazon.com/Prometheus-Rising- Robert-Anton-Wilson/dp/1561840564)

A proposition offered by Wilson on the nature of the human mind - "Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves."

"Of course it is fairly easy to see that other peoples minds operate this way; _it is comparatively much harder to become aware that one's own mind is working that way also_."

Realize that when you think X, all of your successive thoughts attempt to reconcile or solidify the notion of X. In this way, we are the artists of our realities, everyone's reality being different than others since all of it is based on conceptions. Your conceptions and ideas rule you, from who you think you are to what you think the world or your environment is about. It is how you make sense of all sensory data. Not everyone organizes their reality in the same way you do, because they all went through a difficult accumulation of sense data (and subsequent reaction to and organization of said data) throughout their lives to get to where they are.

More: <http://deoxy.org/wiki/The_Thinker_and_the_Prover>

The question then becomes, can we then transcend our conceptions and perceive reality as it is? We may have to consult the Buddha on this one.

<comment><USER5> find any quarters lately?

<comment><USER4> I find this comment to be mocking -- there is a wide range of topics that can be discussed regarding Prometheus Rising, but you pick a petty one.

<comment><USER5> It was meant to be humorous. I enjoyed the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good list. I'd add 'The Checklist Manifesto' by Atul Gawande ( [http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things- Right/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things- Right/dp/0312430000/) ), about how experts with decades of experience in highly complex tasks can still benefit from simple, short and obvious checklists.

<comment><USER7> I read that book, and I think everyone should, but I don't think it falls in the category of developing mental models.

As for cognition, the book is a reminder, or a message, that humans have imperfect memories and we must use outside factors rather than obsessing an idealized form of godlike memory.

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe it is indeed part of some mental model, when we talk about systems we also talk about having checklists for systems, so its good :)

Here's some quotes from the book notes of Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin:

"Take all the main models from psychology and use them as a checklist in reviewing outcomes in complex systems." [1]

"It's a great overview of the lessons of Charlie Munger (partner of Warren Buffett) - and his approach to checklists of multi-disciplinary models to guide clear thinking" [1]

"Simplify and standardize processes, and use checklists to decrease the likelihood of operator errors." [1]

[1] <http://sivers.org/book/SeekingWisdom>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis" -

[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence- analysis/PsychofIntelNew.pdf)

Is a great book on learning to overcome cognitive bias and dealing with a foggy understanding of a problem set.

<comment><USER9> When you say overcoming cognitive bias, do you also mean it will help being able to step back from a problem and think outside the box?

<comment><USER8> Not exactly, stepping back is part of it, thinking outside the box is not.

It means overcoming preconceived ways of thinking, ways that you would tend to think given limited information or denying contrary evidence because it doesn't fit what you think ahead of time -- fitting facts to a theory (bad) rather than building a theory based on facts (good).

For example (and to use a constant source of flame wars here on HN), suppose I'm a huge Apple fan. Apple announces a developer policy change, say, 70% of all app revenue goes to Apple instead of the smaller percentage today.

If I have a cognitive bias (Apple can do no wrong), I might think that this change would only increase app quality since high quality apps already sell a lot, and the change would drive out low quality (low volume) apps that confuse the competitive marketspace and thus increase sales for the high quality apps.

Since I'm biased _for_ Apple, I'm preconditioned to think that anything Apple does is good (even when it's not). I may even go through all manner of fact dismissal, evidence twisting, etc. to make sure Apple comes out looking good over this issue in my mind. In other words, I have a theory and I'm making darn sure the facts fit that theory.

See pretty much any Daring Fireball post for an example of some of the best textbook cognitive bias I've ever seen in print in the tech space.

If I'm able to overcome my cognitive bias I might see this for what it is, a money grab.

Now going the other way, say I'm preconditioned to dislike Apple. In this scenario Apple may announce a new device, say a watch that understands voice commands and has a pico projector so I can see things on a largish screen, the iWatch or some such. I might make remarks that this will be a failure because, who wants to watch movies on their watch? And the Timex Datalink was a huge failure. And as everybody knows voice command of computers sucks. But I'm biased _against_ Apple and will try to find a way to hate anything they make.

Now if I were able to overcome this bias, I might be able to come to the conclusion that it's not a bad idea, but I don't have enough information to come to a judgement so I'll wait, read reviews, try it out a bit, and if it's cool and useful maybe get it. If not, I'll ignore it and move on.

It's about critical thinking and rational thought and is one of the hardest things for people to do, even when they think they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I will definitely second Atul Gawande's _Checklist Manifesto_.

Eliyahu Goldratt's books (I have read _Critical Chain_ and _It's Not Luck_ as well as _The Goal_ ) are not as original as often claimed. They are very readable introductions, but a good project management text will cover most of what they do and more. The project management book that I have found most helpful is _Project Management With Cpm, Pert and Precedence Diagramming_ ; despite its age (1983) it covers a wider variety of techniques with more detail and less extraneous crud than any of the others I have seen (note I am still researching this area, anyone who has a favorite book can leave it in a comment). [http://www.amazon.com/Project-Management-Pert-Precedence- Dia...](http://www.amazon.com/Project-Management-Pert-Precedence- Diagramming/dp/0442254156/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322244392&sr=8-1)

Jonathan Baron's _Thinking and Deciding_ is one of the best books on improving your thinking in general that I have ever read. [http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Deciding-Jonathan- Baron/dp/05...](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Deciding-Jonathan- Baron/dp/0521680433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322244137&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER11> I enjoyed Pragmatic Thinking and Learning ([http://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and- learni...](http://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning)). It's quite accessible, and doesn't feel too pop or new age.

If you're quick, you can get it rather cheaply during the Black Friday sale. (<http://media.pragprog.com/newsletters/2011-11-21.html>)

</comment><comment><USER12> Sequences from <http://lesswrong.com> . Not a book though, but the reading material is available in .pdf, .epub and .mobi.

<comment><USER13> I would add that the material tends to be academic without requiring a great deal of prior knowledge, though you do have to deal with a bit of preaching about statistics if your focus is on cognition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Category 1:

\- Simple Heuristics That Make Use Smart by Gigerenzer, et al. ([http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Heuristics-That-Make- Smart/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Heuristics-That-Make- Smart/dp/0195143817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322242265&sr=1-1)). I have heard good things about this book but have not read it yet.

Category 2:

\- Think Twice by Mauboussin ([http://www.amazon.com/Think-Twice-Harnessing- Power-Counterin...](http://www.amazon.com/Think-Twice-Harnessing-Power- Counterintuition/dp/1422176754))

\- Influence by Cialdini ([http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology- Persuasion-Busine...](http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion- Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X))

Category 3:

\- You already mentioned Michalko, but his other book, Thinkertoys, is also very good ([http://www.amazon.com/Thinkertoys-Handbook-Creative- Thinking...](http://www.amazon.com/Thinkertoys-Handbook-Creative-Thinking- Techniques-2nd/dp/1580087736))

Category 5:

\- Switch by the Heath brothers is excellent ([http://www.amazon.com/Switch- Change-Things-When-Hard/dp/0385...](http://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change- Things-When-Hard/dp/0385528752/))

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, & Problem Solving by Barbara Minto ([http://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-Principle-Writing-Thinking- Pro...](http://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-Principle-Writing-Thinking- Problem/dp/0960191046))

Some Mental Models are available here for free :

<http://www.focusinvestor.com/FocusSeriesPart3.pdf>

<http://www.focusinvestor.com/MungerModels.pdf>

For systems :

Lean Thinking by James Womack

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Some thought provoking personal effectiveness titles :

The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz ([http://www.amazon.com/Four-Agreements- Practical-Personal-Fre...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Agreements-Practical- Personal-Freedom/dp/1878424319))

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz ([http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More- Less/dp/006000...](http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More- Less/dp/0060005696/))

The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

</comment><comment><USER15> Mind Performance hacks ([http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/personal- productivity/0...](http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/personal- productivity/0596101538)) by Ron Hale-Evans, and his web site (<http://www.ludism.org/mentat>).

<comment><USER16> There's also the sequel, Mindhacker, which was published by Wiley earlier this year. Ron's stuff is great, and absolutely worth checking out. Info on the new book is at <http://http://www.ludism.org/mentat/Mindhacker>

(Disclaimer: I contributed two hacks to Mindhacker.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making", Gary Klein

"Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies", Charles Perrow

"Chaos: Making a New Science", James Gleick

"Filters Against Folly", Garrett James Hardin

"Judgment in Managerial Decision Making", Max Bazerman

"Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity", John Gribben

</comment><comment><USER18> Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions - Gary Klein [http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make- Decisions/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-People-Make- Decisions/dp/0262611465/)

Also, Gerd Gigerenzer is a good name to look into. My degree is in Decision Science, so I'm slightly biased against some of the pop-sci authors. However Gigerenzer has a number of books that range from highly accessible to the academic. Also, he has served as an editor on volumes that relate the study of mental models/cognition to other fields.

One example is: Heuristics and the Law [http://www.amazon.com/Heuristics-Law- Dahlem-Workshop-Reports...](http://www.amazon.com/Heuristics-Law-Dahlem- Workshop-Reports/dp/0262072750/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Personally, I'm a big fan of Edward DeBono. Two of my favorite books are: 1) Lateral Thinking: <http://tinyurl.com/88ugdjz> 2) Six Thinking Hats: <http://tinyurl.com/7t2w27y> . There is a video course available on youtube as well: <http://tinyurl.com/6q4rz2t>

I learned about them through Alan Kaye's reading list: <http://tinyurl.com/83bqlbx> He has a section on learning and creativity that has some other good alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm currently enjoying the recently released 'You Are Not So Smart' by David McRaney: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0052RE5MU?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0052RE5MU?ie=UTF8&tag=paraplusmytwi-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393177&creativeASIN=B0052RE5MU&m=A1NBCVVM1MRWGW&ref_=tmm_kin_title_0&qid=1322318853&sr=8-1)

I will never trust my brain again.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's posts like these that make me realize how much I miss the exposed upvote/downvote comment counters that hacker news used to display.

</comment><comment><USER22> There are a lot of really good ones here. Three more:

On overcoming cognitive bias (and understanding how mindsets influence motivation, personality, and behavior): Self-Theories by Carol S. Dweck

Mental peformance: The Inner Game of Tennis - The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

Mental Models on influence: Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

</comment><comment><USER23> Not a business book, but "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things" by George Lakoff is a great guide to how humans think about categories and other related topics rather than how as computer professionals we're trained to represent those relationships.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not a book exactly but I've been reading this blog -->

<http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/>

He/She has an interesting take on psychiatry, might be worth checking out sometimes.

<comment><USER25> lol thank you. I'm luvin it. "For no reason I know, works of philosophy are compromised by even a typo in the introduction, but in science you can open with a golden shower anecdote and no one notices. Oh well. To the experiments."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> EXCELLENT thread.

Here's my addition: <http://tempobook.com/>

It's by the most excellent Venkatesh Rao: <http://www.ribbonfarm.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> \- "Models of My Life" by Herbert A. Simon

\- "Poor Charlie's Almanack" by Charlie Munger

<comment><USER7> "Poor Charlie's Almanack" was one of two books which had a profound impact on my way of thinking ( "Charlie Munger - The Psychology of Human Misjudgment", listed in the parent post is probably the best piece in this book.)

The other book, which I read when I was 15 or 16, "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence" by Ray Kurzweil was the other. Instead of looking at the universe through the question of why won't this work, I began thinking about problems as under what circumstances would this occur. Today, the book may be dated, but its effect for me remains.

<comment><USER27> The Psychology of Human Misjudgment is available online (or an iteration of it is at least): <http://www.rbcpa.com/Mungerspeech_june_95.pdf>

Also avaiable: A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business Charles Munger, USC Business School, 1994

<http://ycombinator.com/munger.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_model#References>

</comment><comment><USER28> Dietrich Dörner, _The Logic of Failure_.

</comment><comment><USER29> In the vein of shaking up your ways of approaching things

The Zen of Creativity ([http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Creativity-Cultivating-Your- Artist...](http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Creativity-Cultivating-Your- Artistic/dp/0345466330))

The Zen of Seeing ([http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Seeing-Drawing- Meditation/dp/03947...](http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Seeing-Drawing- Meditation/dp/0394719689))

Learning by Heart ([http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Heart-Teachings-Creative- Spir...](http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Heart-Teachings-Creative- Spirit/dp/B0058M6HD4))

</comment><comment><USER30> Not what you asked for but i believe the act of programming increases your cognitive ability. Like writing down your thoughts can clear things up but even more so because of it's preciseness.</comment>


Doctors' Secret Language for Assisted Suicide - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/05/doctors-secret-language-for-assisted-suicide/393968/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> I accidentally euthanised my father because I misunderstood the conversation I was having with a nurse. He had a stroke and was in intensive care, we were told he probably wouldn't live - and if he did - he'd require care for the rest of his life. He had fallen into a coma when the nurse kept asking me if I thought he was in pain and needed more morphine. She kept giving him more, returning to ask the same question and doing it over and over. I can't remember how many times. He began Cheyne–Stokes breathing, and eventually died.

I remember feeling strange about the situation, and years later I connected the dots between the amount of morphine given, the breathing (symptomatic of morphine overdose), and his subsequent death. Understanding that I was responsible was something that took a long time to cope with.

My mother faced terminal cancer a few years ago, and I found myself in exactly the same situation. Thankfully I understood what was happening. The decision to take her off fluids and to "help her along," was made by a team of medical staff with myself deeply involved in the discussion (which looking back, was a desperate attempt for me to negotiate any way I could for her life). At least Mum understood she was going to die, and I'm glad my eyes were open to what was happening.

I feel that the economics of hospital beds have a lot to do with this. Beds in the oncology ward are in demand, as of those in intensive care. I've seen all of my families previous generation die of cancer in either in the same way - in hospital, in oncology or intensive care, always assisted death.

It makes me think that if I ever go down that road I don't want to be anywhere near the medical industrial complex.

<comment><USER4> My grandfather had Alzheimer's and after several years of accelerating decline, he fell and broke his hip and over the course of another year slowly deteriorated into him being wheelchair-bound and basically catatonic, until he developed a wound which would not heal.

It finally got bad enough that he was moved to hospice. The doctors and nurses at his hospital did not make any sort of suggestions about "helping him along" and it was my wife (whose mother works for a probate/guardianship attorney and has observed the process many times) who suggested that they use the code words to "help him along". My parents and grandmother, ever in denial, would not consider it.

So instead he lay there being given palliative care but no food or drink, only water sponged on his lips to keep them moist, for 2 weeks before he finally died of either starvation or dehydration. It was awful- his urine turned a dark purple and it was like he melted from the inside.

I _wish_ the doctors had been a little more forward about it. There was absolutely no purpose in making him endure that. I can only hope his mind was by then too far gone to suffer, but it sure looked like suffering to me. My wife and I have discussed it and both know that's we would prefer a little help. Sometimes it really is the most humane thing to do.

<comment><USER5> This is ghoulish. I'm sorry you had to go through that, and it honestly makes me terrified of having to deal with it when my parents pass someday - <USER2> father has already had a stroke, and told me he does not want to go through it again, that he would rather be taken off life support and be allowed to pass peacefully. I can't even imagine having to watch someone I cared for starve to death in front of me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The doctor said to my relative, "Here is the morphine injection device. If you press this button once, you will get a small dose of strong morphine. If you are in severe pain you can press it twice. Never press it more than three times, as you would die for sure at five or six presses." He had terminal cancer, severe pains and he died peacefully thanks to the hint.

<comment><USER7> Is this like a syringe or a machine? I thought those machines would limit the output

<comment><USER6> It was a machine. I think the other posters may have already described configuring it for plausiable deniability. It was no secret that this was a possibility, my relative told me and several others about a week before he finally used the opportunity. The end was good - as much as you can call dying of cancer good. It was indescribably hard to see him die, but it was even harder to see him suffer in agony being slowly eaten from inside by this terrible disease. I cried then and I cry now but more time would only have meant more suffering. I can't even call it a suicide. It had nothing to do with suicide, he didn't want to _die_. He wanted to stop the pain and there was no other way. Ending his life was the final pain relief.

<comment><USER8> But suicide is sometimes that - no other way to stop the pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The first assisted-suicide advocate I ever met left an impression I will never forget.

He had the most romantic life story. He was an Indian from Gujarat who had moved to America in the 1960s to become a hippy. Then one day he found a flier for an Indian dance troupe that was coming through town. In the back row of the group photo he saw a face that he instantly recognised as the love of his life.

He followed her back to India, where he courted and they fell in love. Her parents refused permission to marry, so he got a haircut and a job in the civil service, and the parents accepted. They married and soon had two small, beautiful children.

Then she got breast cancer.

"At the end, she was in so much pain. It lasted so long. I would have done anything, anything to make that easier for her. But I could only watch while the cancer slowly tortured her to death." He was still broken from the experience. It had been 30 years. Life-sized portraits of her were hung throughout the house. The mythic quality of their love was undiminished, not only for him but for anybody who entered that house.

What their love needed was a quiet, peaceful, comfortable death. That would have been good and right and true. It's worth fighting for.

<comment><USER10> > the cancer slowly tortured her to death

With the help of the Indian government, which makes it extremely difficult for people to get access to opioids, even if they're terminally ill patients.

[http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/an-epidemic-of- pain-i...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/an-epidemic-of-pain-in- india)

<comment><USER11> Wow that's evil. The war on opiates is unethical. The fear of people enjoying a vice overrules compassion, which is just sick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Having gone through the death of a grandparent following a stroke, the magic words we had to use were "I think he's in pain." He was well and truly gone by then, but his body was still battling on despite that. Any questions regarding whether we could give him something to let him down easy were met with legally-mandated "no, we can't give him anything... _unless you think he 's in pain_."

It took us a few rounds of this before we cottoned on and completed the dance: "Yes, I think he's in pain."

<comment><USER13> Confirmation from the article:

"It is legal for people to take or give large doses of narcotics to relieve pain, even if a known side effect is that it may hasten death."

\-- Stanford medical ethicist David Magnus

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My heart just aches for the poor woman who had to inject her husband.. I can't even begin to imagine having to do this with my partner.

For every person talking about it openly now, I'm sure there are literally hundreds more dealing with this in secret, and that's a terrible shame. I really hope euthanasia laws progress globally to allow these poor people some peace.

<comment><USER15> Funny, i thought the exact opposite. "How lucky!" She was so fortunate to be there at the end and have the ability to take action.

Watching a loved one die, slowly, while you stand by helplessly observing their pain... that is much worse.

<comment><USER16> She obviously did not feel this way. She had no support from the medical establishment she was surrounded by. I imagine it was isolating, and made a painful moment worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've seen a terminal cancer patient breathe her last after the nurse (with doctor authorization) overrode the safeties on the infusion system to give her an overdose of painkillers. She wasn't ever getting out of that room alive, and everybody knew it. She died with her family and loved ones at her side.

I think what a lot of people (in America) may not understand about the national euthanasia discussion is that in the absence of firm policy, we don't have no euthanasia; we have ad-hoc, case-by-case, absolutely-functionally- necessary euthanasia. The notion that doctors can always do no harm is a polite fantasy that blinds people to the messy realities near the boundary of human life and death.

Similarly to the abortion question, end-of-life euthanasia is something people find medically necessary sometimes, and in the absence of a society-wide consensus that allows for it, doctors, nurses, and patients are left doing the best they can and bearing the moral responsibilities alone. Unlike the abortion question, absolutely everyone _is_ going to be in a place where they are either caring for someone who is dying or dying themselves.

</comment><comment><USER18> Also on assisted suicide and interesting: "By the time you read this, I'll be dead - Between 1999 and 2001, I helped eight people die, including the poet Al Purdy. Now, as I prepare to take my own life, I'm ready to tell my story" by John Hofsess

[http://torontolife.com/city/life/john-hofsess-assisted- suici...](http://torontolife.com/city/life/john-hofsess-assisted-suicide)

I also recommend the Documentary "Choosing to die" with Terry Pratchett [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnu340_terry-pratchett- choo...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnu340_terry-pratchett-choosing-to- die_shortfilms)

Very powerful and thought provoking

</comment><comment><USER19> The problem with this being a secret, behind-the-scenes thing is that there's plenty of scope of serial killers. Harold Shipman got away with being the most prolific serial killer of all time because he was knocking off old people.

This is the argument that needs to be made, because euthanasia is and will go on anyway.

<comment><USER20> Good point, shermozle. And the problem with it being allowed and acceptable is that older people "don't want to be a burden", and younger people with inheritances in the balance might make a decision based more on greed than on wanting to help.

It's a difficult and emotive subject, and you can easily argue both sides convincingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had a similar 'secret language' experience, though not at all related to AS. I have a diabetic pet, and the vet was explaining how to use insulin. Naturally, one of our concerns was cost. He kept mentioning how he'd seen many people use insulin for months after it's expiration-date. He was clear that you should "always follow the instructions", but that occasionally he'd seen people use old insulin, and, as long as they were consistently checking their glucose, it worked fine for them.

We finally figured out his message: The insulin expiration date might or might not be valid. Testing is better than going by the bottle's expiration date, within reason of course. He couldn't tell us to ignore the date, but he could tell us about when he'd seen it work past the date.

</comment><comment><USER22> Oregon was the first state to approve physician assisted suicide.. but last year, after a stroke left a relative in a coma with no possibility of recovery, my family got to learn that the state recently passed a law making it illegal to disable a pacemaker.. So even though we requested that they unplug her, they were not able to turn off the one thing that was still keeping her going for a day or so longer..

</comment><comment><USER23> "Just over 3 percent of U.S. doctors said they have written a prescription for life-ending medication, according to an anonymous survey published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1998. Almost 5 percent of doctors reported giving a patient a lethal injection."

That seemed really high, given that most physicians aren't in relevant specialties. Clicking through to the article, it actually says: "The sample was drawn from 10 specialties, selected on the basis of previous surveys as those in which physicians are likely to receive requests from patients for assistance in hastening death." Further, it was clear that there were self- selection biases in the responses.

</comment><comment><USER24> Another process that "assists" dying is withdrawal of fluids while someone is heavily sedated. The ensuing death is "natural", but inevitable.

<comment><USER25> Allowing someone to die of dehydration (a process that takes many hours and involves gradual shut down of organ function) might be marginally more kind than letting someone die more slowly, but is only fractionally so.

Fortunately most doctors have more empathy and ethics.

The difficulty comes with conditions that aren't immanently terminal. Campaigner Debbie Purdy took eighteen months to starve herself to death after she reached the point where she did not want to continue with her progressive MS. That's just insane and barbaric, but fewer doctors will step in at that point.

We need better laws, as a matter of civil rights. If I have the right to life, I should have the right to relinquish it.

<comment><USER6> > If I have the right to life, I should have the right to relinquish it.

That statement needs better justification than sounding good. For assisted suicide, It is necessary but not sufficient that the person wishes suicide. Just because someone wants to die doesn't mean that we should let them die. And even if someone wants to die, it doesn't imply that that person have a right to demand someone else to kill them - you do not even have the right to demand that someone else kills you by looking the other way when you kill yourself. The criteria for when someone should be allowed to help someone else to die is complex and requires a lot of safeguards.

<comment><USER25> > Just because someone wants to die doesn't mean that we should let them die.

I think it does mean we should let them. In most places it isn't illegal to commit or attempt suicide.

By having a process to end your life we've a much better chance of having professionals encounter people at an earlier time. For people who want to end their life because of other addressable needs, we've a better chance of helping them through it.

Forcing someone to live indefinitely when they desire to die is cruel and draconian and ultimately fruitless. People will find ways to end their life, and often in ways that traumatise or damage others.

> it doesn't imply that that person have a right to demand someone else to > kill them

Straw man. Nobody is suggesting people have the right to demand any particular person kill them. Assisting with dying is optional for patient and assistor in jurisdictions that allow it.

> The criteria for when someone should be allowed to help someone else to die > is complex and requires a lot of safeguards.

The criteria supporting any human right is complex and requires legal safeguards. Your point seems artificially argumentative.

<comment><USER26> > By having a process to end your life we've a much better chance of having > professionals encounter people at an earlier time.

Indeed, it is not like it is going to work like the suicide booth in Futurama, probably you will need to see some therapist and you will have the opportunity to explore different resolution to your problems. The "call for help" suicide for example will most likely been caught with no risk of death.

Isn't that what happened with abortion ? Because parent argument is very similar to those against abortion.

<comment><USER27> "You probably don't want an abortion, talk to this psychologist and wait a minimum of X days before you can do this" =? "You probably don't want to end your life, talk to this psychologist and wait a minimum of X days before you can do this"

In the case of abortion you weigh the mother's wishes vs the child's potential existence, in the case of suicide you weigh the individual vs their friends and family. I suppose whether or not they're similar depends on how you weigh these factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The heartbreaking stories in this article, as well as several from the comments, all seem to be the symptoms of an overly litigious climate in our healthcare system. Health workers are afraid to speak plainly. It's gross.

<comment><USER16> I don't think that's the case. I think the primary factor is the laws which govern how medical professionals can act - and I think that has more support from the article, and by people's comments.</comment></comment>


Privado Private Search Engine - rlv-dan https://www.privado.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Why should I use this Bing proxy instead of DuckDuckGo or Qwant?</comment>