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[penguinofhonor]

.

[SalmonGod]

For once, I'm dropping in here to spread word of a good deed

CEO sets a minimum wage of $70,000 for everyone in his company

It's a fairly small company, but still...

[Vector]

Holy crap. I dig this guy.

[SalmonGod]

I wonder how many tens of thousands of job applications are going to flood in on him now.  My own desire to run away to Washington grows daily.

Although this bit really underlines how disconnected the rich are from everyone else.

The New York Times ran a story on April 13 about how Price, the founder and CEO of Gravity Payments, read a research paper arguing that people who make less than $70,000 can truly become happier by earning more money.

"My people would be happier if I paid them just enough to live reasonably comfortably and worry free?  Why didn't anyone tell me this before!"

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The interesting part is that he really did respond to it.

[Bauglir]

I like this guy. I like this guy a lot. I wish the company were publicly traded, so I could give them money as a sign of approval. Failing that, well-wishing emails have been dispatched!

[SalmonGod]

The interesting part is that he really did respond to it.

It is interesting.  I mean... do the people in charge of businesses seriously not think of this?  Is it just a matter of saying please and explaining that it would genuinely help us out?  I would think all the fucking protests would communicate that there is a need... or maybe this guy just didn't believe it until it was presented to him as research?

Edit:

Ok... I guess I didn't read into it enough.  The guy is young.  Two years younger than me.  Looks to me like he hadn't been in his position of privilege for all that long.  In his case, it just took a little time to sink in how far he'd come, and that he was in a position to do something like this.  Very awesome.  Will follow Bauglir's lead and send a positive e-mail.

[Vector]

or maybe this guy just didn't believe it until it was presented to him as research?

I think it's this. People have moved to "It's true if Science" and, because of the particular nature of the scientific community--usually, "It's true Only If Science." People in marginalized groups are having this problem a hell of a lot right now, because when they say something it's "anecdotal evidence" which people are literally being trained to disbelieve.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Probably because once you buy into anecdotal evidence you can believe anything.

[Bauglir]

Probably because once you buy into anecdotal evidence you can believe anything.

Make you wonder how much grease they had to buy for those mountainsides...

Man, you don't need to unconditionally accept all anecdotal evidence, nor do you need to generalize it beyond its scope, in order to make it a useful component of decisionmaking.

[Vector]

Probably because once you buy into anecdotal evidence you can believe anything.

Yes, but it also means that people are literally losing their common sense and their trust of other people. The community is falling apart via skepticism and assumption that other people are bullshitting you. There are times when the Absolute Truth matters, and times when that matters less.

Man, you don't need to unconditionally accept all anecdotal evidence, nor do you need to generalize it beyond its scope, in order to make it a useful component of decisionmaking.

Exactly. I feel like there's this goal to get all of humanity on the same Received Knowledge From Scientific Databank page, and it seems so toxic, so anti-diversity (and therefore unstable), and so ... honestly, crushing of people who have other ways of thinking about anything when those ways usually aren't harmful. Received scientific knowledge is a piece, not everything.

[Leafsnail]

Accepting anecdotal evidence in this matter is actually an insanely bad idea because it benefits people arguing against progressive policies.  Does the minimum wage need to be increased?  No, here's a guy who's on minimum wage and he has a flatscreen TV!  Do we need welfare for the disabled and unemployed?  No, here's a guy who's on welfare and he's a super lazy and bad person!  Etc.  If you stick to actual statistics regarding how many people are in poverty and studies on how that poverty affects people then you'll be on much safer ground.

[SalmonGod]

A statistic is just a collection of anecdotes, unless I'm horribly misunderstanding something.  I mean I understand why anecdotes shouldn't be taken at face value, but when a large number of people present the same anecdote, it should be taken a bit more seriously.  It's not a huge logical leap to see a huge crowd of people in the street crying in unison that they're poor and unhappy about it as equivalent to a scientific study revealing that being poor makes people unhappy.

Accepting anecdotal evidence in this matter is actually an insanely bad idea because it benefits people arguing against progressive policies.  Does the minimum wage need to be increased?  No, here's a guy who's on minimum wage and he has a flatscreen TV!  Do we need welfare for the disabled and unemployed?  No, here's a guy who's on welfare and he's a super lazy and bad person!  Etc.  If you stick to actual statistics regarding how many people are in poverty and studies on how that poverty affects people then you'll be on much safer ground.

This is a criticism of cherry-picking/confirmation bias, not accepting anecdotes.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yes, but it also means that people are literally losing their common sense and their trust of other people. The community is falling apart via skepticism and assumption that other people are bullshitting you. There are times when the Absolute Truth matters, and times when that matters less.

Our common sense is bad and the "community" isn't exactly in a good position. You can try to bias away by linking truth to totalitarianism, but the fact of the matter is that we live in reality.

Exactly. I feel like there's this goal to get all of humanity on the same Received Knowledge From Scientific Databank page, and it seems so toxic, so anti-diversity (and therefore unstable), and so ... honestly, crushing of people who have other ways of thinking about anything when those ways usually aren't harmful. Received scientific knowledge is a piece, not everything.

If all humanity accepted empiricism and rationalism our problems would be much less horiffic. Anything lost in that transition was not worth preserving. There is no diversity in objective matters.

[Putnam]

You're horribly misunderstanding something. Statistics are gathered using a bunch of rules to eliminate bias that a simple "collection of anecdotes" won't really convey.

I could get a collection of anecdotes that says that every single person in America is actually a white libertarian between ages 18-25 and nobody would accept that as a proper result because it's demonstrably false.

Common sense is pretty much a meaningless phrase in general...